Silent Hill: Praying in Vain
by hauntedheadnc
Summary: Augusta Jackson would go through Hell itself to atone for the gravest sin of all...
1. The ordinary envelope

**Please note that "Silent Hill" and all related settings and characters are property of Konami. I mean, do you think I could come up with something this twisted on my own? Also, this is a work in progress and I'll add to it as I can. All reviews and suggestions are appreciated!***  
  
Chapter 1.  
  
Augusta Jackson's world fell apart shortly after breakfast on a warm Friday morning in early May, as she stood by the bank of pretty, cast iron mailboxes in the courtyard of her apartment building. She held a pale pink envelope in her hand and hoped the world could go on normally, as if nothing had ever happened, if she could only ignore the envelope and pretend she had never found it.  
  
If she pretended hard enough maybe that would make it true and the envelope would vanish, never having been there at all. Then, traffic could continue flowing smoothly by on French Broad Avenue, which ran past her apartment building, whose walls wrapped protectively around three sides of its shady brick courtyard and could go on bouncing the traffic noise from wall to wall to wall with an odd, hollow roar. Meanwhile, the leaves of the trees crowding the courtyard and the flowering vines clambering up its walls would continue rustling in a morning breeze. And wrought iron balconies above would drip with moisture from last evening's thunderstorm and the windows and French doors of every apartment would peer at one another blankly from their white wood frames, and moss would go on thriving between every brick.  
  
As if nothing unusual had happened. If only she didn't look down at the thing in her hand. Or, as long as she dropped it where she stood, or threw it as far as she could and hoped the wind would carry it into the street to be shredded by passing cars' tires.  
  
She looked down. She couldn't help it.  
  
The envelope, with the embossed rosebud of the American Greetings Company on its flap, was like any other envelope that could hold any other card from any card shop anywhere in America. The card could express sympathy, or wish its receiver a happy birthday, or tell someone they were loved or appreciated.  
  
But Augusta Jackson had received a Mother's Day card. It wasn't possible, she thought. It couldn't be what it was and yet the address was correct – drop an envelope with that address on it in any mailbox in the country and that envelope would make its way through rain or sleet or fog or gloom of night to Augusta's apartment building at the corner of French Broad Avenue and Haywood Street in downtown Asheville, North Carolina, directly across from the Chamber of Commerce.   
  
And the stamp was an ordinary thirty-seven cent stamp, and looked like a tiny American flag. And the postmark and return address – Silent Hill, Illinois – were perfectly normal as well. This card had been mailed from a beautiful, normal town by a lake three states away from this beautiful, normal city in the mountains.  
  
But the card had come from a child dead before she had ever lived, and that was what Augusta couldn't understand.  
  
"I love you mommy. You are the best mommy ever. Love, Mary-Elizabeth," was written across the inside of the card, where a charming little poem about a mother's love couldn't make itself heard against words printed with a bright red crayon obviously clutched carefully in a little girl's hand. A little girl in a pretty dress, so proudly showing off her penmanship (which had astounded her kindergarten teacher) to her mommy. A little girl who would have turned five last August – if Augusta's calculations were correct – and who would now love school and love learning but who would have already been taught to read and write by her mommy, with help from the Pack Memorial Library only a few blocks away on Haywood Street, where the two of them would have walked hand in hand every day they had time enough to explore the world of Winnie the Pooh or the Berenstein Bears. A sweet little girl with a beautiful smile who would have been the light of her mother's life and a source of joy to everyone who met her – but who had never lived outside of Augusta's mind and heart because Augusta had aborted the fetus the moment she could after learning she was pregnant. 


	2. Chatting with the pastor

Pastor Huntley's three o'clock appointment, a married couple who emerged from his office smiling through tears and holding hands, finally departed after shaking the pastor's hand a few minutes after four. Augusta had been scheduled to see the pastor at 3:30 and had waited on a comfortable tapestry sofa balanced on little claw feet, in the tiny waiting room outside Pastor Huntley's office while the pastor's secretary answered a phone that never seemed to stop ringing and chatted and joked with the smiling assistant pastors and church employees who dropped by every few minutes to visit. Watching the parade of happy, content people, Augusta was so distraught she felt ill. But what had finally nearly sent her fleeing from the church was a group of children from the church preschool filing by clapping, laughing, and singing a song led by their teacher. Augusta's stomach knotted and she had to look away.  
  
There were so many people here living normal lives without her burden, and Augusta desperately wanted to be one of them, coming to chat with the pastor's secretary or calling to ask a question about this mission trip or that Sunday school class. Instead, here she sat, waiting to talk to her pastor about a thorn of guilty despair that had quickly grown into a stabbing thicket since she had moved here at her grandmother's invitation to Asheville a few months before. It tore at her whenever she saw children's clothing in the department stores at the Asheville Mall or Biltmore Square Mall when she went shopping, baby food at the supermarket, or tourists coming into the visitors center at the Chamber of Commerce where she worked, who bought ball caps or shirts for their toddlers who often sat contentedly in their strollers and gurgled happily as they tried to catch the colored bits of light that fell from sun-catchers hanging in the windows. Augusta could barely hold her tears back if a baby cried in a restaurant, and she stared, feeling dead inside if a group of schoolchildren on a field trip ever wandered by the Chamber of Commerce as they scrutinized the statues, sculptures, architectural treasures, and other artworks along the Asheville Urban Trail.  
  
Since moving to Asheville, she had felt listless, and numb to the city's beauty and to her grandmother's concern. She couldn't tell her grandmother. Couldn't tell anyone. She couldn't tell a soul she had killed her child – that she had let a man she hated now and wasn't especially fond of then convince her to kill a child that she had grown convinced would have been a daughter. She wanted to die, except she was sure she would burn in hell because after all, that was what happened to murderers. So she had come here to her church first – she could barely stand it, but the truth was that she had come to speak to Pastor Huntley to learn how to make peace with her dead little girl. She might even try to make peace with herself, though she doubted that was possible. Then she would go home to her nice apartment in that beautiful old building – just one in the sea of beautiful old buildings that made up downtown Asheville – and she would kill herself. Or perhaps she would drive out on the Blue Ridge Parkway, "America's Most Scenic Drive," which ran through Asheville on its way to the tallest mountains in the Eastern United States to the east and to the Cherokee Indian Reservation to the west, drive somewhere far out on the Parkway and jump from an overlook. Or, and this seemed the best option, find some way to sink her car in Lake Lure or the French Broad River, then walk far into the forests of the Western North Carolina mountains, where her remains wouldn't be found for months, if ever at all, and kill herself there. If she just disappeared it would probably be gentler to her grandmother. If she left a mess of blood and bone chips for someone else to clean up it would just break Granny's heart, because the poor old woman would have thought there could have been something she could have done to stop it. Yes... better to "disappear."  
  
"Ms. Jackson?" Pastor Huntley leaned down and Augusta looked up to see him gazing at her with warm concern. Behind him, his secretary had half-risen from her chair and was staring with the same concern, as if there was nothing more important for her to do than help the pastor comfort this woman who had murdered her child.  
  
And Augusta realized she had been weeping into her hands, and tried to stop, and to dry her eyes on her sleeve.  
  
"I'm sorry," she said, her breath hitching, "Please, can we talk now? I can't wait another minute... I've been waiting since about 3:15, and I saw the children walk by..." – she fought not to burst into tears again and felt the blood vessels in her eyes throb – "I saw the children walk by and I can't stand it any more. Help me, please."  
  
Pastor Huntley didn't bother leading her into his office. He sat down beside her on the sofa and listened as she talked. His secretary brought a box of tissues and cups of coffee, then sat back down behind her desk, switched off her phone, and began to work a crossword puzzle, and to Augusta's relief, did not eavesdrop. It was as if the worst sins imaginable were poured out on the tapestry sofa on its little claw feet every day, and she thus had no need to listen in or be shocked because to her the gravest sins had become commonplace. Augusta didn't know if that was admirable or terrible, but she was grateful, and told the pastor about the dead places in her heart.  
  
"I moved here back in the winter," she said, wiping her eyes with a crumpled, soggy tissue, "I had to get away from my boyfriend – my ex- boyfriend."  
  
Pastor Huntley nodded.  
  
"We'd been living in a town in Illinois called Silent Hill. It's in between Springfield and Bloomington-Normal. It's hilly there, and Silent Hill is built beside a big lake and surrounded by Paleville National Park. We'd moved there from Hot Springs, Arkansas – that's were we were both from – because he got an offer to manage a hotel in Silent Hill. And me... well, I worked at the visitors center in Hot Springs, and I worked in the visitors center in Silent Hill, and now I work in the visitors center here in Asheville. It's something I've always been good at – I just love places, and I like working with people, and if I can help someone enjoy a beautiful place, then I'm happy..."  
  
"I'm sorry. I'm rambling –"  
  
  
  
Pastor Huntley interrupted, "No, honey... You take all the time you need. Just say what's on your mind; tell me what's upsetting you. This may be one of the biggest churches in town, but we all love you here. You just let it all out." Which was something her grandmother would say, and Augusta smiled in spite of herself at the thought of this man, at least six foot seven, balding and white, and bulging with muscles that refused to turn to fat in his middle age, could sound so like that little black woman who kept a front yard overflowing with flowers despite her arthritis, who had never stood more than five feet tall, and was so thin and wispy that to walk across a parking lot on a breezy day was to be pushed about wherever the wind wanted her to go.  
  
"Thank you," she said, and dabbed at her eyes again. "We – my boyfriend and I – lived together. We weren't married and I know that was wrong, and I got pregnant, and I know that was wrong too. But then..."  
  
She paused, knowing that to say it was to never stop sobbing again.  
  
"But then..."  
  
She covered her face with her hands.  
  
"He said we weren't ready. He said maybe after things were more settled, or maybe when we both had more money and better jobs. Maybe just some other time." She stopped and couldn't say any more.  
  
Pastor Huntley took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His church, Mount Pisgah Baptist Church, had more than two thousand members, and every day he spoke to people in the worst pain of their lives. He comforted people who had contracted AIDS or had developed cancer. He prayed with those whose loved ones were gravely ill and in one of Asheville's hospitals or hospices. He counseled married couples working toward forgiveness for infidelity. And from time to time, he talked with women who had gone through abortions – now he was talking with Augusta Jackson, who attended the eleven o'clock service every Sunday morning with her grandmother, who was the apotheosis of a little old lady and was never to be seen on church property not wearing one of her stylish hats. Augusta's grandmother, Louisa Jackson, had been a member of Mount Pisgah Baptist for decades and had talked of nothing for the past year except for how excited she was that her beautiful granddaughter was finally moving close by, the first Jackson to come back home to the mountains since Augusta's daddy and his brothers had joined the military and all gone off to the Little Rock Air Force Base down in Arkansas – and why a North Carolinian would want to live in Arkansas was beyond her.  
  
It was nice to finally see someone in the family showing a little sense Louisa would always say with a laugh.  
  
"Well..." Pastor Huntley began, "You aren't the first woman who's ever gone through this, and I'm sorry to say you won't be the last."  
  
" I thought I was stronger than that," said Augusta, "How can anyone be so weak they'd actually agree to abort their own child, their own flesh and blood – kill that little baby growing inside them – just to make that awful son of a bitch happy?" She was shouting now and stopped, swallowed, and apologized.  
  
"There's no need for any sort of apology," Pastor Huntley smiled. "I told you to let it all out, and I expect you to. And I think it's a good sign that you're sorry about what happened and that you're angry about why it happened. That tells me you can heal and go on and live a good life. It tells me you don't have to let this eat at you for the rest of your time on this earth. And it tells me that by the end of it all, you're going to have quite a testimony to share with other women, especially those unwed and pregnant who might be thinking about having an abortion. And lastly, it tells me you've likely got a lot more on your mind, so tell me about it. That's what I'm here for and what this church and everyone in it are here for, so get it all out while you're surrounded by people who care about you."  
  
Augusta stared at him, agape. She hadn't expected this. She looked over to the pastor's secretary, who was still working her crossword puzzle as calmly as before. She hadn't thought about how it might feel to have hope, for the first time since leaving Silent Hill, and it shocked her. She hadn't thought about healing, or going on to live a good life.  
  
"Didn't think you'd hear someone say that, did you?" asked the pastor. "I believe you're going to find that praying for forgiveness will solve a lot more problems in life than you'd expect."  
  
Augusta's heart sank in an instant. Something like this couldn't be forgiven, especially since she had aborted her daughter – she was sure the baby would have been a little girl if given a chance to be born – because she was too chickenshit to stand up to Joseph, who had said they weren't ready for a child when in fact they were are ready as they were ever going to be. Especially when she had killed her daughter because her boyfriend, Joseph North, simply hadn't wanted a child. Because he had wanted to concentrate on his work at the expense of a woman who loved him – had loved him, perhaps briefly, perhaps at the very beginning of their relationship since he seemed to have been working diligently since then to smother even the small spark of affection she had for him, Augusta corrected – and who thought that perhaps to do as he suggested would be to win security with him, perhaps even love, even though there was probably no chance in hell of that. Especially when she had murdered her daughter because Joseph had as much as admitted that he didn't have time for her and sure as hell wouldn't have time for a child in his life, and wouldn't want to have to support his unwanted child. After all, it would fuck up his concentration on his work and his plans to move up to a hotel even bigger and better than the venerable Lake View. As if someone couldn't raise a child and take care of a woman and manage a hotel at the same time. It was a sorry bastard who couldn't, but at the end, Augusta had realized that Joseph was tolerating her, and nothing more, and that she hadn't loved him in months and only stayed with him because the money he made managing the Lake View Hotel provided her with quite a comfortable life.  
  
Maybe if he had loved her and she him, together they could have raised a child and cared for each other and he could have managed his grand old hotel, all at the same time. But the past was dead and rotting in its grave. She had learned that a union built on hope for love instead of love itself was not worth killing a baby girl for. After her love for him died and his initial affection for her had burned out, she had hoped he would love her again and nourish the memories of her love for him, and coax them to bloom again into new love. And until then she was enjoying his money, and had agreed to anything she thought might have a chance to transform her hope into something other than a months-long waste of time.  
  
And to pray for forgiveness for that sort of weakness, which had led to the death of her daughter in hopes perhaps a man who had, she had learned, never loved or cared about her even as little as she had cared about him suddenly would, was to pray in vain. Augusta couldn't believe that God was inclined to answer the prayers of cowards. 


	3. While packing a suitcase

As she packed her suitcase, Augusta recalled that Pastor Huntley had disagreed.  
  
"The thing about the past is that it can't be undone," he had said, "and all you can really do is try to make amends for what you've done wrong when you can -- when you've hurt someone or stolen something, for instance -- and pray for forgiveness when you can't. You've aborted a child. That's serious. Horrific, in fact in my opinion, but in the eyes of the law of the United States of America, and the states of Illinois and North Carolina, it's not murder so you're a free woman and you're going to stay a free woman. It's not as though you've come here and confessed to a crime. It's a cliche I know, and it sounds like something out of a Victorian novel, but the only prison you'll ever see is the prison of your own guilt."  
  
"In the eyes of God, though, abortion is murder. It's the taking of the life of a child. However, murder isn't the unforgivable sin."  
  
"What is, then?" Augusta had asked, she remembered as she carefully selected a week's worth of bras and underwear.  
  
The pastor had sat back with his hands clasped behind his head while his secretary quietly shushed and shooed away yet another church employee come to visit.  
  
"Rejection of God. He offers forgiveness for anyone who sincerely wants it, and you sincerely want it. If you didn't care about what you had done and weren't sorry, that would be unforgivable."  
  
It would likely be cool in Illinois still, at least cooler than here, so she packed sweatshirts and jeans, then added tee shirts and a few pairs of shorts just in case of warm weather.  
  
"But you're sorry about what happened. It's killing you inside. You wish you could go back and undo it all. You can't of course. No one can, but the next best thing is to pray for forgiveness. God is ready and willing to forgive you. Nothing makes Him happier than for one of His children to repent and strive to come closer to Him."  
  
Several pairs of socks. Nothing felt better than a nice, clean, fresh pair of socks, and Augusta usually wore at least two pairs a day.  
  
"God can help you in so many ways, Ms. Jackson. In ways you haven't even thought of. You've said you stayed with Joseph because you loved him once, and he liked you once and the two of you just seemed as though you couldn't get away from each other even if you tried. You've said while you were waiting for him to like you again, maybe even love you, you stayed with him because he made a comfortable living for the both of you and you didn't want to give that up and try to make a life for yourself on your own. And you've said you agreed to abort your pregnancy in hopes Joseph would continue to provide for you, and possibly even see your act as an act of devotion and fall in love. And if he fell in love with you, maybe you would fall in love with him again."  
  
"That was so selfish," Augusta had wept. "I was so selfish. I killed a child because I was selfish. I just wanted to be taken care of, and I gave up everything so he would take care of me just a little longer..."  
  
"It was selfish," the pastor agreed. "But you know what you did wrong, and you can pray for forgiveness for that as well, and with God's help you can find a man who will love you, and who will want to raise a daughter with you."  
  
She might want to go to dinner somewhere nice while she was there, thought Augusta, so she packed a dress. It would wrinkle in the suitcase, but wrinkles were easily taken care of.  
  
"God wants to forgive you because you're truly sorry for what has happened. You're sorry you aborted your child, and you're sorry you agreed to have the abortion because you wanted Joseph to provide for you. God can forgive you for all of that, and help you find a man who will truly love you and who you can truly love. He'll help you find someone you can be happy with, because it's never selfish to love someone who loves you in return. In fact, that's one of the most un-selfish things a person can do. And when you find that man God intends for you, you together can bring a life into the world and nourish it and raise a child who will be a good person and help make the world a little better than it was when he or she came into it. And that's the most selfless thing of all a person can do."  
  
Shoes. Comfortable walking shoes, and at least one nice pair to go with the dress.  
  
"That's the most amazing thing about God," the pastor had said, "He can take the worst situations and turn them completely around, and transform them into the most beautiful things you can imagine. He'll help you find that man who's meant to be your husband, and by then you'll truly appreciate how special love is, and how it's so much more than just being taken care of, and how precious the child born of that love really is."  
  
Toiletries, and a few pieces of jewelry, and tampons and pads.  
  
"Just ask for His forgiveness and God will grant it because you're sincere. You weren't a coward for what you went through. You were just a sinner and we all are. But God loves you."  
  
She carried her suitcase to the apartment door, and slipped on the leather backpack she used as a purse and carried everywhere she went, then went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water.  
  
"Your child -- your daughter -- is in Heaven now and is so happy you can't even imagine it. I'm sure she's forgiven you, and God will forgive you the instant you ask for Him to. All that's left is for you to forgive yourself."  
  
Augusta had been heaving with her sobs, and was too weak to stand. The pastor patted her shoulder comfortingly.  
  
"Can you do that? Can you accept God's love and go on with your life? Can you call upon Him to guide you to the true love He wants you to know here on Earth? Will you let Him guide you now? You've already made a wise choice to come to this place where your grandmother loves you and where you've got the perfect opportunity to start fresh, but can you let God help you start over?"  
  
She put her keys in her pocket, and remembered she said she could. She carried her suitcase into the hall then turned to lock the door behind her.   
  
"Good. Now let's sit here a bit longer and you can say anything you feel you need to. But I promise God will forgive you, because He loves you and so do all of us here. You won't be praying in vain if you ask His forgiveness and for the strength to live a good, strong life."  
  
An expert at packing, Augusta had condensed the equivalent of two weeks' worth of clothing and essentials into a single suitcase. Still, the suitcase weighed as though it contained two weeks of outfits, alternate outfits, shoes, and a miscellany of perfume, jewelry, and protection against her period, should it come in the next week. She struggled with it all the way down from her third floor apartment, out through the shady courtyard, then to her red Ford pickup truck in the tiny tenants' parking lot next to her building. Setting her suitcase in the passenger seat and her backpack in the passenger side floorboard, she tried to remember if she had forgotten anything. She had called in to work to take a week of personal days, saying a friend in Illinois was in the hospital, and her supervisor had agreed, clucking sympathetically but asking she please be sure to return before tourist season started in earnest, which it would in about two more weeks. She had made sure all her appliances were switched off, and had asked a neighbor to take in her mail and newspaper. She hadn't informed her grandmother of her plans and didn't intend to because to do so was to answer questions she didn't want to be asked.  
  
There seemed to be nothing else to take care of, so she started her truck and made her way through downtown traffic to Interstate 240, then to Interstate 40, and she drove until the domes and turrets and slender Art Deco spires of her beautiful home of Asheville had fallen away behind her and were swallowed up by the lush green mountains, as if there had never been a city there at all. 


	4. Lamb Avenue

Augusta first began to wonder exactly what the hell she was doing by going back to Silent Hill when she pulled off the Interstate just before 2:30 in Frankfort, Kentucky to buy some lunch, refill her truck's gas tank, and pay a desperately needed visit to the bathroom. She had, happily, found a gas station attached to a Subway sandwich shop, and as she ate her sandwich, she pensively stared at the traffic passing by outside.  
  
Anyone could have sent the card, she thought. Anyone who knew about her past, even Joseph and though she didn't think him creative enough to do something like that, she knew better than to underestimate him. He always knew exactly where to salt her wounds to hurt her the most. When she had finally found the strength and the disgust for him and what she had done for him to leave him, he had laughed at her and only told her to hurry up and get going. Laughed at her, she remembered. Their final argument flared into a war that night; he learned, and didn't care, that she had only loved him once for a brief time long before, and she learned he had never much cared for her at all and didn't care now if she lived or died. And it goes without saying, he had spat at her, that I sure as fuck don't give a good goddamn about that little glob of shit that got flushed down the toilet back at that clinic you went to in Springfield. Stupid bitch, you should have remembered to take your birth-control pills.  
  
Augusta felt the sting of tears and blinked them away. It probably wasn't Joseph, she thought; she doubted he would have spent the money it took to buy a card and a stamp. She certainly wasn't worth that much to him. But who else? She knew some churches sometimes sent out mailings to taunt local sinners, but surely a church wouldn't have spent money on a nice card and sent it all the way to her in North Carolina. She remembered once in Hot Springs a church had flooded the mailboxes of western Arkansas with lurid postcards, each with a verse of Scripture detailing the virtues of modest attire, depicting a promiscuous-looking woman in a bikini pretending to shy away from superimposed hellfire; as she recalled, the postcard protested the Crystal Falls water park at Magic Springs Amusement Park, because it was attracting scantily-clad men and women from all over the state, whose sinful public displays of flesh were compromising the community's morals. Furious letters to the editor, both for and against the mailing bounced insults off one another in the local paper for weeks afterward. But the postcards – thousands were sent – were mailed bulk rate, at only a few pennies apiece.  
  
She really didn't know who could have sent it, she finally admitted to herself. Joseph cared so little about her he wouldn't have gone to the trouble of antagonizing her, especially not now, five years later. Anyone with a motive of self-righteous harassment wouldn't have spent the money or time to select a nice card, write the message inside, with a crayon in childlike printing, then send it with a first class stamp. Especially not if they were also harassing every woman who had gotten an abortion in central Illinois over the past five years.  
  
So why was she here? More than six hours from home, staring at cars passing by, eating a sandwich that wasn't quite as good as the ones she could get at her favorite Subway restaurant in Asheville? She didn't know. Augusta knew better than to even hope by some miracle her daughter was alive. Babies were born prematurely, some of them by months, every day, but her pregnancy couldn't have been more than a month and a half along, and nothing survived at that stage. She didn't think fetuses even looked human yet at that stage of development.  
  
She pulled the envelope out of her backpack and stared at it. Like the words written inside, her address and return address were of the same careful, childish printing. The return address, she read again now as she had more than six hours and three hundred miles ago at home, was on Lamb Avenue – she remembered that was in North Silent Hill, where the tightly packed brick buildings of downtown petered out and gave way to old row houses and townhouses along shady streets that backed up to and abruptly halted at the edge of the national park. There was something on Lamb Avenue, but she couldn't remember what, either a hospital or school, which would make sense, she thought and suddenly realized that was it. A school, Nathaniel Hawthorne Elementary, was located on Lamb Avenue in North Silent Hill. It was one of three elementary schools in town. The other public school, Borden Street Elementary, was in East Silent Hill, where the streets were lined with magnificent Victorian mansions the tourists were always taking pictures of. And Midwich Elementary was a tiny private school on Midwich Street in the oldest section of town.  
  
Her daughter would have attended Nathaniel Hawthorne Elementary School, Augusta realized. She had lived with Joseph in a brownstone that looked as though it could have been transported straight from New York City, on St. Germaine Avenue, only three blocks away from the school. If Joseph had loved me and would have loved a child, she corrected quickly. Had she simply had the strength to walk away from him with her child growing safely inside, her daughter would have attended whichever school was closest to her apartment in Asheville, a thought she had always found so agonizing and immediately brimming with loss she had never been able to find the strength to ask which school that would be. It was painful enough to live so close to the library where she and her daughter would have read together.  
  
She was wasting time, she suddenly decided. She put the envelope away in her backpack and finished her lunch, then got back in her truck and drove west, toward Illinois, and Silent Hill. 


	5. The missing exit

Augusta realized, as a large sign beside Interstate 64 welcomed her to Illinois, that she had yet to see a billboard trumpeting the delights of Silent Hill, which seemed odd. The formidable and well-funded Toluca County Department of Travel and Tourism usually went out of its way to ensure that travelers everywhere in Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri were well-informed of what fun there was to be had in Silent Hill and its neighboring towns, as well as throughout the rest of the Capital Region. One overzealous year, she remembered, their billboards had even been erected along various Interstates in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Kentucky.  
  
She had seen billboards glowing brightly in the night by the highway advertising the Vacchs Mansion Museum in Brahms, the Koontz Opera House in South Ashfield, the County Museum of Art in Ashfield, and even one detailing the various reasons why one should make the trip to Public Beach on the shore of Toluca Lake in the village of Pleasant River. But there had been no mention of Silent Hill on any sign. She wondered why, when there had always been so much to see there – Toluca Lake and Paleville National Park with its Paleville Ruins, of course, plus the Silent Hill Wetlands Gardens, the Victorian mansions of East Silent Hill, shops and art galleries in Central Silent Hill, Lakeside Amusement Park, the artists colony of Wrightwood, the museums... There was so much, but not a single mention of any of it. She couldn't understand why. One billboard did advertise Paleville National Park, but stated the park entrance could be accessed from Brahms. It was as if Silent Hill no longer existed.  
  
Hours later, as she drove along Interstate 55, heading north from Lincoln, in Logan County, the mystery deepened. Toluca County could be accessed by three exits from I-55, one serving Ashfield and South Ashfield, another in Brahms, and the last in Silent Hill. Traveling north after passing by the first two exits, Augusta should have been able to exit from I-55 onto US Highway 26, which was called Nathan Avenue within the boundaries of Silent Hill Township. From the exit, she should have been able to drive southeast along Nathan, through a chaotic sprawl of strip malls, fast food restaurants, and chain motels on the north bank of the Green River, through a gap between two high hills and into South Vale, a neighborhood in South Silent Hill, where the road reached a T-junction at the Toluca lakefront. At that intersection, turning right, Highway 26 merged with Highway 73, but was still called Nathan Avenue, and bridged the Green River and then Rosebush Creek, then ran east along the lakeshore through South Vale and on to Pleasant River. Turning left, Highway 73 disentangled itself from Highway 26 and became Sandford Street, and ran north through the Paleville neighborhood, past the Lake View Hotel and Lakeside Amusement Park, then into the South Park section of Silent Hill.  
  
But there was no exit. There were on-ramps and off-ramps, one of each on either side of I-55, but all were blocked by the same metal guardrail, studded with evenly spaced reflectors, that formed a barricade by the roadside everywhere else along the highway. Behind the guardrails were concrete crash barriers, like those erected during highway construction to block off a lane. And beyond that, Augusta saw no lights pricking the night. No illuminated signs for motels or restaurants or strip malls. No streetlights. No lights in any parking lot. And the familiar green signs with their white lettering that should have announced the Silent Hill/Pleasant River exit were gone as well. She was so shocked she nearly ran into the back of a van ahead of her.  
  
At the next exit, in McLean County, Toluca's northern neighbor, she pulled off the Interstate, doubled back, and drove south. And driving south, the Silent Hill exit looked the same as it had when she drove north. No lights. No signs. No life. No exit, just a guardrail and concrete barriers blocking the on-ramps and off-ramps. So she continued on to the next exit at Brahms, where the green sign with its white lettering, with its identical twin on the opposite side of I-55 there to inform northbound drivers, read, along with the exit number:  
  
BRAHMS  
PALEVILLE NAT'L PARK  
PLEASANT RIVER  
  
Augusta stared, and slowed without realizing it, earning her an angry horn blast from the driver behind her. She didn't care.  
  
"What the hell is going on here?" she muttered, and took the exit.  
  
Where was Silent Hill? 


	6. There was a town here

Motels clustered along Forest Green Boulevard at the I-55 exit in Brahms, and from among the selection, Augusta chose a Ramada Inn. The desk clerk was a pretty and cheerful young Asian woman, and she and Augusta chatted while the front desk computer decided whether or not Augusta's credit card could pay for a seven-night stay. The clerk, whose name was Amethyst, was pleasantly surprised to learn Augusta had once lived nearby and had come all the way from North Carolina to visit old friends and familiar places.  
  
"Where in Toluca did you live, Ms. Jackson?" Amethyst handed the registration and a pen to Augusta and pointed to the various lines she needed to sign.  
  
"Silent Hill. North Silent Hill, actually, where all the row houses are. By the time I moved, the city was trying to dress up the neighborhood's name a little bit by calling it the "Windowbox District," because so many houses had windowboxes full of flowers on their window ledges. They were gorgeous in the springtime, all in bloom... I actually had a couple of boxes of those bright orange daylilies in my windows..." She looked up from the registration to see that Amethyst's smile had dimmed.  
  
"What's the matter?"  
  
"Oh, nothing," said Amethyst, "I used to live in Silent Hill too, in South Vale. My parents ran the Lucky Jade Chinese restaurant –"  
  
"I used to eat there all the time! Their food is wonderful!"  
  
Amethyst smiled sadly. "Yeah. It sure was. After what happened though, they moved over to Ashfield and opened up there, and from what folks tell us the food still is wonderful. The insurance was just enough to cover the costs. They didn't keep the name though, because it made them sad. I understand, though, because it makes me sad to think of Silent Hill, too. I miss it."  
  
Augusta blinked, stunned, and couldn't find her voice. She stammered for a moment before she was able to say, "You miss it? What do you mean? It's only about ten miles away... isn't it?"  
  
And it was Amethyst's turn to be surprised. She stepped back from the front desk and clasped her hands under her chin. To Augusta it looked as though she were praying.  
  
"Well, I mean..." Amethyst began, "Surely, you know about what happened... Don't you?"  
  
"No... I was living outside the country before I moved to North Carolina," Augusta quickly lied and tried to remember anything that could have happened to Silent Hill. Anything at all that could have been so destructive as to make the desk clerk sad to remember the town, and force her parents to start a new restaurant in a new town. Something she might have seen on the news or read in a newspaper... and nothing came to mind.  
  
"So you really don't know..." said Amethyst. "I don't know how to tell someone about something like this. Would you mind if we sat down for a bit to talk?" She gestured to a breakfast area across the lobby, where tables and chairs clustered on two large Oriental rugs around a giant potted ficus tree.  
  
"Sure," Augusta said, uncertainly, and reached for the key Amethyst had laid on the counter, "Let me just go and put away my things and I'll be right back out."  
  
*  
  
When she returned to the lobby, she found Amethyst, the desk clerk, sitting at a table, studying the potted tree. Amethyst turned and smiled sadly as she approached and took a seat.  
  
"Well, Ms. Jackson, let me first say it's always nice to meet another Silent Hillian. We're scattered all over now, it seems, and we so rarely get together."  
  
"Wait, that's not quite right. There's actually a club for people who used to live in Silent Hill, in Ashfield. We meet every couple of months or so. But if someone who lived in Silent Hill ever leaves Toluca County for someplace bigger or better, that's when it seems they don't come back very often. And it's understandable. Silent Hill was a really great town, and I guess to come back brings too many painful memories."  
  
"But what happened?" asked Augusta. "You keep referring to it in the past tense. And when I came up the Interstate, I didn't see any signs for anything there. The Tourism Department still looks like it's going strong because I must have seen billboards for everything else there is to see and do in this county, but there wasn't any mention of Silent Hill at all! And there's no exit anymore. Used to, you'd exit at Silent Hill to go to the park or Pleasant River, but there's just nothing there! And I noticed when I came back down to Brahms, that you get off the Interstate here now to get to Paleville National Park and Pleasant River – and it never used to be like that!"  
  
"Well," Amethyst sighed, "That's the way it is now. You can't go to the park or Pleasant River, or anywhere else, via Silent Hill because Silent Hill doesn't exist anymore. It's gone."  
  
"Gone? What do you mean it's gone? How does a town of 20,000 people go anywhere?"  
  
Amethyst laughed breathily and closed her eyes for a moment, shaking her head. "Well, it's not that Silent Hill went somewhere, it's that about two or three of the biggest hills up above it, around the reservoir, went somewhere. Actually, they moved south. Very quickly and very violently. When did you move away from here?"  
  
Augusta thought back, and answered, "It must have been February or March of 1999," and didn't want to think about why she had moved away, but couldn't help herself. She and Joseph had fought the last time toward the end of February, and Augusta had packed her things and left immediately, either during the last week of February or the first week of March to stay with friends back in Hot Springs, and then her grandmother invited her to Asheville and she finally had made that move that winter, just before Christmas.  
  
She realized, if something serious had happened to Silent Hill any time in 1999, she would have been oblivious, too depressed to follow the news or watch TV, and almost too depressed to hold a job.  
  
As if in confirmation, Amethyst said, "That would explain it. If you were out of the country by September, you wouldn't have heard anything about it. I doubt it would have been important enough to make the news on another continent."  
  
"Gosh, it's even sad to think about it," Amethyst looked away, then back at Augusta. "That summer there was a fire in the park. A bad one. It didn't do much damage to the town itself, not like that fire back in 1992, but it must have destroyed a hundred or more acres of the park, including about fifty or sixty acres on the south side of City Reservoir. That was a terribly dry summer."  
  
She sighed. "And then it wasn't dry anymore. Toward the end of August it started to rain. And rain. And rain. It rained for a solid week before it let up to a drizzle a few times, and then it went back to a downpour for a few more days. The rivers and creeks filled up, and the lake started to rise, and as you can imagine with the trees burned away from the reservoir, there was a lot of erosion."  
  
An awful picture began to form in Augusta's mind.  
  
"By the middle of the second week of rain, Silent Hill was evacuated because the county engineer said the dam at the reservoir was unstable because of the erosion and the rain. The only people who remained were those who physically couldn't be moved, like patients at Alchemilla or Brookhaven, plus some staff there and some police and firefighters. Plus, I guess there were some people who just didn't want to go. I heard there were a lot of people up in Wrightwood – you remember where that was I'm sure; north and across the Interstate from Old Silent Hill – who stayed."  
  
"And the county engineer was right. The dam broke on a Sunday. I remember my parents and I were staying at this very hotel, and we heard about it on the news that evening. The station out of Springfield, as I recall, but they didn't know the full extent of the damage until the next day."  
  
"That's when they were reporting it on TV that there just wasn't much of Silent Hill left."  
  
"A mudslide?" asked Augusta.  
  
"A flood and a mudslide," Amethyst corrected.  
  
"But they rebuild from things like that all the time! Places all over the world recover from floods and mudslides!"  
  
"Well, not Silent Hill. But then again, it was worse than you might expect right from the beginning. By the fifth or sixth day of really hard rain, sinkholes started opening up here and there around town – I mean you remember how it wasn't just the rivers we could see that flow into Toluca Lake. There were an awful lot of underground streams under the town, flowing down from springs in the park. When those swelled, they ate away at the rock they flowed through. And of course, as the rain went on, more holes opened up. They were swallowing up entire houses, and opening up big pits in the streets. It looked like the entire town was being struck by meteors or something; there were craters everywhere. I've never seen anything like it."  
  
"When the dam went, I don't know how many millions of gallons let loose, but the reservoir was more or less completely drained, and all that water caused three big hills that had been eaten away by erosion, south of the reservoir, to let go too. They collapsed, and all that mud and rock and water went the only direction it could go..."  
  
"Straight south," said Augusta bleakly, "Right into Silent Hill."  
  
"Like water down a drain," Amethyst nodded, "downhill along the path of the Toluca River between Old Silent Hill and Central Silent Hill, and along the path of the Illiniwak River between Central Silent Hill and East Silent Hill. You remember how Barker's Ridge sort of formed a northern boundary between North Silent Hill and East Silent Hill and the park? There were only a couple of gaps in the ridge. There was that one between the ridge and Wrightwood Hill, where Wrightwood was, where the Toluca River flowed through, and that other one where the Illiniwak flowed through, between North and Central Silent Hill and East Silent Hill."  
  
"I remember them. Between the Toluca and the Illiniwak, it was West Barker's Ridge and over the Illiniwak and onward, it was East Barker's Ridge, and the Interstate went north through the park between Wrightwood Hill and the Toluca River."  
  
"Yep," said Amethyst, "All the mud and debris backed up and dammed the water for a few minutes at the Toluca and Illiniwak gaps, and then let loose again, so what happened more or less, was one wave of water and mud swept down the rivers, into the lake, then a bigger one came through a few minutes later. There were a couple of survivors at Brookhaven Hospital who were able to describe it."  
  
"All that water and all those rocks, and all that mud buried what they didn't sweep away, and when the whole mess all hit the lake, it sent a wave straight south, and all along the shoreline. Paleville didn't get hit too badly, but South Vale was washed away. By the end of it, there were just a couple of places that weren't obliterated. That was Wrightwood, up on Wrightwood Hill, and Paleville, which was damaged by the wave but not as badly as South Vale. And, I guess you also could count that part of Nathan Avenue by the Interstate. It suffered some flooding from the Green River, but not damage from the dam break."  
  
Augusta gaped, dumbstruck.  
  
"I know it's a lot to take in," Amethyst was on the verge of tears, "and I'm sorry you've come back here to it all. Silent Hill was a great town. A really beautiful place."  
  
"I had no idea. I couldn't imagine anything like that. I hadn't heard anything at all about it!" Augusta felt hollow inside, and sick with confusion and loss, as she thought about a town she had loved and about the card in her room in her backpack. "There wasn't an exit from the Interstate, so I came down here instead... I was wondering what had happened, but I never would have dreamed of anything..."  
  
"The National Park Service annexed the land," said Amethyst, wiping her eyes, "And technically it's part of the park now. The land where Silent Hill used to be is being used to study natural reforestation. There are some ruins there, and abandoned houses and stores in Paleville and Wrightwood, and there are a lot of abandoned stores and motels by the interstate on Nathan Avenue... but that's all that's left."  
  
Suddenly Augusta was on her feet, and bolting for a nearby bathroom, where she violently spewed what little remained of her lunch eaten hours ago into the toilet, then fell to her knees on the cold tile floor, her empty stomach still heaving. And she wept. A moment later, Amethyst knocked gently on the door, then entered, hearing Augusta sobbing. She knelt beside her and put her arm around her, and Augusta let herself be held like a child.  
  
Amethyst, the pretty young desk clerk, held a fellow Silent Hillian and said gently, "I know, I know... I'm sorry to have been the one to tell you. It was home to me too." 


	7. It's gone now

Augusta returned to her room feeling humiliated at having collapsed in front of a stranger. She felt flushed, burning with shame at the thought of a stranger comforting her – of being so helpless she needed that comfort. Closing the door behind her, she snatched her backpack from its place on one of the room's two beds and rummaged through it until she found the card.  
  
The address was unchanged. Lamb Avenue. Silent Hill, Illinois, with a postmark dated only three days before. Augusta remembered there had been three post offices in Silent Hill, the main post office downtown in Central Silent Hill, and two smaller offices in South Vale and East Silent Hill. And downtown, South Vale, and East Silent Hill were all gone, according to Amethyst – if all three places were gone, where could a card with a Silent Hill address have come from? And why, if Lamb Avenue, like every other street in the "Windowbox District" of North Silent Hill now lay buried beneath God only knew how many tons of dirt and rock, with saplings growing above them, why would the card have Lamb Avenue as a return address?  
  
Augusta sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands. Her stomach felt sour and there was a bitter taste in her throat. She was hungry but couldn't stand the thought of food now. Her head pounded. And she knew she had no choice. She would have to go to Silent Hill, or whatever remained of it. She had to see where this card had come from and who could have sent it. She wouldn't be able to live with herself until she saw the ruins of a town she loved with her own eyes.  
  
And she wouldn't be able to rest tonight, however fitful any sleep promised to be, until she called the front desk and apologized to Amethyst, whom she was certain had better things to do than kneel and whisper soothing words with her arm around a woman she didn't know who stank of vomit. She stood and walked to the tiny table that stood between the beds, and picked up the phone.  
  
*  
  
Augusta passed the night restlessly, staring at the ceiling and only dozing now and then. When she slept, she dreamed of a black cloud bulging cancerously and pregnant with something awful – but it was shot through with spears of searing white light. She couldn't imagine what it might mean, and finally rose, tired and grouchy from her fitful sleep and confusing, annoying dreams, as soon as the sunrise touched the windows. She showered, brushed her teeth, and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with a black-and-white print of one of the big stone griffins guarding the north entrance to the Grove Arcade Public Market back in Asheville. Then she chose a plain gray sweatshirt from her suitcase and tied it around her waist. Glad she had packed a comfortable pair of old white Reeboks, she sat on the bed and tied them tight. Then she stood and slung her backpack over her shoulders and left the room.  
  
Nobody noticed her as she walked through the hall to the lobby and then to the glass double doors leading to the parking lot. Guests of the hotel sat in the lobby, watching TV, chatting amongst themselves, eating bagels and fruit from the continental breakfast, and riffling through brochures displayed in a big wooden bin by the doors. Two men sat at a table, telling jokes to their wives, whose laughter echoed in the large room. She thought back to her conversation years ago with Pastor Huntley at Mount Pisgah Baptist Church; she remembered watching people living normal lives she could only dream of that day. None of these people in the lobby had received a Mother's Day card from a dead child, postmarked from a town that no longer existed because it had been buried in a landslide. She envied them, but pushed open the doors and walked outside to her truck, started it, and drove away.  
  
She had somewhere to go. Something to see.  
  
Until Silent Hill was swept away, Highway 26 led from Brahms to Pleasant River, passing through Silent Hill. The road formed the southwestern boundary of Paleville National Park, which had curled in a fat crescent around Silent Hill, though Augusta supposed now the park was shaped more like a half-circle since its annexation of Silent Hill's ruins. As she drove through the morning, she remembered, thinking that all of Toluca County was as beautiful as the park, with hills and meandering creeks and rivers, thick forests and deep lakes painted in soft colors by the sunrise. She had loved living here, loved Brahms, Ashfield, South Ashfield, Silent Hill, and Pleasant River. Loved Paleville National Park. Loved the forests and the water in all its forms, in rivers and lakes and swamps and streams, that defined Toluca County. She had especially loved her job, enjoyed it as much as she had her job in Hot Springs and now in Asheville, at their visitors centers, explaining to curious tourists why they had made a wise choice in coming all the way to Hot Springs, or Silent Hill, or now Asheville. There were wonderful memories to be made, so much joy, so much love to experience...  
  
Remembering that Silent Hill was no longer there to create special memories or give joy made her crushingly sad. Tears came to her eyes – for the thousandth goddamn time since yesterday morning, she thought.  
  
Highway 26, now rerouted as she had expected, wound its way through the morning, a sleek blacksnake of new asphalt and freshly painted stripes slithering along the southwestern, and then the southern boundary of the national park, which had apparently annexed quite a bit more than just the remains of Silent Hill.  
  
What made the park unusual enough to deserve its special status even amidst the beauty of Toluca County – Augusta had explained this to countless inquiring visitors at the Silent Hill Welcome Center – was a collection of peculiar stone ruins, apparently those of a large town, situated around a group of springs that poured forth the creeks and streams that later entwined and formed the Toluca and Illiniwak rivers, which ran southward into Toluca Lake. Known as the Paleville Ruins, they were nicknamed, and more popularly called, the "Macchu Picchu of the Midwest" because they stair-stepped up and down a series of large hills. Originally, they had been included in the estate of a wealthy early French settler of the area, Jean-Auguste de Paleville, but Paleville's ancestors later donated the land to the federal government, and thus stamped their names on Toluca's history, the new national park, and a neighborhood in the town that had flourished for years along the southern border of their former estate.  
  
Silent Hill had been a resort long before the park's creation, spreading itself around the westernmost bay of gigantic Toluca Lake, with six neighborhoods on the north shore, trailing down via Paleville to the south shore, where South Vale gazed northward and contentedly regarded its fellow neighborhoods. The town had been responsible for the flood of Victorian wealth that had poured into Toluca County and transformed it from a hardscrabble backwater into a fashionable resort for the wealthy from all over the Midwest and South. Silent Hill drew the tourists, who brought the money that enriched the merchants, who in turn bestowed upon Toluca's villages their handsome downtowns crowded with beautiful brick store buildings, surrounded by splendid mansions and bedecked with grand churches and theaters, fine libraries, and even a museum or two.  
  
But the birth of Toluca County had been unpleasant, as Augusta had explained so many times before. Toluca County, with its marshes and seeming overabundance of water, had been cast off from Logan County, which had cut away its northeastern quarter, and McLean County, which had thrown away its southwestern flank, in the early 1800's. Neither county wanted the land, dismissing it as a trackless swamp, but neither had realized the potential of a flower that grew only in the swamps of the new county. "White Claudia" grew in dense clusters around Toluca County's waterways, forming mounds and hummocks frothing with pale blossoms, emitting a chemical in its leaves and petals that naturally repelled mosquitoes. And it was because of the unusual flower that Silent Hill, on the sparse high ground amidst the swamps encircling Toluca Lake, was founded. Old Silent Hill came first, then Wrightwood high on its hill just to the north.  
  
The creation of Silent Hill had been a contentious issue for more than century, from the first hints of prosperity in the 1870's until Silent Hill's destruction in 1999. Organizations such as the Silent Hill Welcome Center, Toluca Lake Chamber of Commerce (Proudly Representing Silent Hill and Pleasant River Townships Since 1948!), and Silent Hill Genealogical Society preferred to dismiss the first townspeople as dangerous cultists, whose strange religion was known only as "The Order" and whose infatuation with black magic and dark rituals had earned them well-deserved banishment from among even the most ardent practitioners of magic in New Orleans. But many residents whose ancestors had been among the first settlers had found a voice in groups like the Silent Hill Historical Society, who equated the founders' persecution with the torment suffered by the first Mormons, who had been forced to flee Nauvoo, in Hancock County on the Mississippi River in west central Illinois, for the wasteland that was later coaxed into bloom as Utah. The Welcome Center and Genealogical Society, among others, celebrated the missionaries and traveling "circuit-rider" ministers who had drowned The Order beneath the benevolence of Christianity and spread word of the delights of Silent Hill, which brought new residents, tourists, business, and prosperity. The Historical Society and its compatriots, meanwhile, nursed a grudge and presented in loving detail the history of The Order and its influence on Silent Hill, with paintings and presentations and voluminous documentations of the religion's beliefs and rituals, and of their "persecution" by Christians who had encroached and taken over a town on a beautiful lakeshore that was, and would always be, the rightful property of The Order.  
  
Though the Genealogical Society and those who agreed with it, and the Historical Society and its sympathizers loathed one another, both agreed that moving north, the settlers and their religion had found no welcome anywhere along the Mississippi River, not in the rough-hewn settlements of Mississippi, not in Memphis, not in the towns and villages of southern Illinois. Finally, in the unwanted territory known as Toluca County, then home only to the impoverished hamlets of Brahms and Ashfield, the settlers found a home. "Swampy Toluca" was home already to outcasts and criminals, and thus a caravan of settlers whose magic had terrified even the voodoo queens of New Orleans was no more unusual than the murderers, rapists, swindlers and other unwanted souls who had escaped their pursuers in the dismal new county. And so Silent Hill had sprouted and grown within its ring of white flowers that kept away mosquitoes and their fevers and sicknesses, isolated even from Toluca's villages of criminals to the west and sheltered to the north by the Paleville Estate, whose master had grandly ignored the world beyond his property's boundaries even when it was still a part of respectable McLean County.  
  
According to legend, Silent Hill's name had come from a confrontation between The Order and an ancient man living in a crumbling cabin on the edge of the Paleville Estate, last of the Toluca Indians, from whom the county and its great lake took their name. The Order had learned, and interpreted it as a sign from their god, that the Tolucas had regarded the region as sacred, a place so infused with holy powers that even the spirits, devils and guardians alike, were silent with awe. And from that old man, The Order had learned how to enter a world of silent, reverent spirits. The White Claudia plants that repelled mosquitoes and kept away disease also opened doors to other worlds, though modern science since had peeled away a hundred layers of superstition to reveal those doors opened only because the same natural insect repellent in the beautiful white flowers was a powerful hallucinogen, more potent than LSD.  
  
And some people, the Silent Hill Historical Society included, had wanted that fact publicized on the informative placards at Silent Hill Wetlands Gardens. Augusta never understood why. As if America's drug problems weren't bad enough, why make it known, especially when thousands of tourists from all over the country were passing through each year, that there was something else out there guaranteed to "expand the mind," literally ripe for the picking. Too many people had realized how to make use of White Claudia's peculiar properties as it was. Boil White Claudia blooms, stems, and leaves into tea, dry and crush them and snort them like cocaine, smoke them like marijuana and the effect was the same – Augusta remembered certain enterprising members of the community deciding to profit from Silent Hill's unusual flower. They sold it to tourists and citizens alike; bags of dried leaves to be smoked, bricks of white powder wrapped in plastic to be snorted. Silent Hill's dirty secret. And yet the Historical Society and more than few Silent Hillians thought advertising the strange properties of White Claudia wasn't a problem – why not, was their argument, when placards on the willow trees at the Gardens describe their medicinal properties? – while the mayor and police department fought but never seemed to win against the growing drug problem.  
  
Had thought it wasn't a problem. Had fought but never won, Augusta corrected. There was no town anymore. No place to fight a drug problem, and no place for a drug problem to worsen. Augusta remembered by the time she had left Silent Hill, rumors were flying that The Order was still somehow alive and active, and responsible for the spiraling drug trade, though according to the Chamber of Commerce, historians at the Genealogical Society, and the more knowledgeable old-timers at the Welcome Center, The Order had finally ceased to exist in the early 1880's, with many of its followers carried off by an epidemic of scarlet fever that struck in 1883, and its ideology beaten to death by relentless migration of new residents, new churches, new tourists, and all the forces of Victorian modernization swirling through the bustling, booming little city.  
  
By 1999, White Claudia abuse had been spreading out of control throughout not only Silent Hill and Toluca County, but in Springfield and Bloomington- Normal, and even increasingly in Illinois's other large towns and cities, even Chicago. It had crossed state lines to menace Davenport, Iowa and Evansville, Indiana, and St. Louis. What was worst about White Claudia though, Augusta remembered from police information seminars, was that addiction set in quickly, sometimes after only one or two uses, and White Claudia addiction was reputedly worse and more persistent even than heroin addiction. It brought on hallucinations, of course, but also delusions and a host of other symptoms. Possibly due to those delusions, Augusta remembered the police had announced, some White Claudia abusers in Silent Hill had become almost fanatical about "evangelizing," a term that had come to mean, in Silent Hill, creating new White Claudia addicts.  
  
In 1997, Augusta recalled, a strange woman named Dahlia Gillespie was arrested for allegedly lacing salad bars and buffets at restaurants all over town with powdered White Claudia. One woman, a tourist from Rome, Georgia, had become violently ill due to an allergic reaction to the powder, consumed during a meal at the Lucky Jade's Chinese buffet. Tongues all over Silent Hill wagged at the possibility Dahlia Gillespie was acting for The Order, that she might be the Grand High Priestess (or whatever she would be called) of a revived Order, that she could even be conducting terrible, dark rituals in the basement of her downtown antique shop, the Green Lion – right under everyone's noses, if you can imagine. But then again, she had lived in Wrightwood, where it seemed all the strange people in Silent Hill had made their homes. It was, after all, an artists colony, where tourists could wander narrow, twisting streets that labored their way up Wrightwood Hill, browsing and buying paintings, sculptures, pottery, and more from shops run by dozens of artists out of the neighborhood's tiny houses, which seemed dropped at random from above, wedged in all along the streets at crazy angles, amongst scattered rocky gardens. If a bizarre cult could operate in Silent Hill, with a hidden church of followers adoring an evil, insane god, Wrightwood was the only place in town those weirdos might live.  
  
Right?  
  
By 1999, Silent Hill had been living in fear.  
  
It was strange. Even remembering the unpleasant side of life in Silent Hill somehow caused happy memories to rise to the surface of her mind. In recalling the White Claudia epidemic, Augusta thought of her pleasant job at the Welcome Center, all her friends who had worked with her, and how they had all gossiped with one another about the news of the day, including the newfound infamy of the town's signature flower. She thought of Wrightwood, dismissing a thousand ridiculous rumors to instead recall soulful little houses and wildly twisting streets, and the beauty that could be bought there. She had loved that neighborhood, overflowing with character and the same bohemian free-spiritedness that ran wild in Asheville.  
  
She drove slowly along familiar roads, ravenously hungry and eating stale M&M's from a half-full package she had discovered in her glove box. She finally reached Pleasant River, where she found that Highway 26 now merged here with Highway 73, as it once had in Silent Hill. Highway 73 now ran due north via an impressive new causeway across a narrow point of Toluca Lake and Highway 26/73, as it had in Silent Hill, snaked away to the east. Toluca County had obviously moved on without Silent Hill, with its highways rerouted and rebuilt, and the people, and probably the treasures, of Silent Hill redistributed. As she drove past the pretty little houses and quaint shops of Pleasant River along the old route of Highway 26/73, which now bore the name of Innsmouth Street, she wondered if the paintings and sculptures at the Public Art Gallery had been moved to safety before Silent Hill's destruction. If so, they probably now resided at the County Museum of Art in the county seat of Ashfield. She wondered if anything comparable to the Silent Hill Wetlands Gardens or Lakeside Amusement Park had been developed, or if any remnants, pieces of intricately carved wooden gingerbread trim perhaps, of the grand "painted ladies" of East Silent Hill ever washed ashore to be scavenged by someone in Brahms or Ashfield or South Ashfield whose palatial Victorian castle still stood, safe and sound. She wondered what had become of the rare books and maps and documents once housed at the central town library and its two branches.  
  
The houses of Pleasant River, painted vibrant shades of blue, purple, green, red, yellow, and other cheerful colors, stood side by side in tidy rows along its streets. Past the intersection of Innsmouth Street and Plainfield Avenue, however, there were no more cross streets and the houses bled away, with gaps of forest between them growing larger and larger until there were only the trees, with Toluca Lake showing now and then between them, sparkling in the sunlight. A sign appeared, welcoming anyone who read it to Paleville National Park, and not far behind it, a sign announced that Innsmouth Street, if it was still called that, was a DEAD END.  
  
Which meant it still led somewhere, though not Silent Hill, stopped at whatever it led to, and went no farther. Once it had led to a tunnel through Wiltse Hill, and burrowing through, emerged as Nathan Avenue in South Vale. At the tunnel there had been an observation deck overlooking the lake, with public restrooms and a stone staircase leading down to the Wiltse Memorial Greenway, and Augusta wondered what was left. Had it all been torn down? This was still a public road, obviously, with the park sign but maybe now it only led to a campground, or some sort of interpretive center with information about the reforestation project the desk clerk had mentioned. There was probably no trace of Silent Hill, and the sadness began to build again.  
  
But several miles later, she had her answer. The tunnel, and public restrooms, a tiny parking lot for visitors to the observation deck, and even the stone staircase were all still there. A metal grate blocked the tunnel, however, and instead of a sign announcing the Wiltse Memorial Greenway, a National Park Service sign pointed the way to campgrounds, the reforestation project, and a ranger station, with a caveat that hikers entered at their own risk. If they were injured or killed exploring the ruins of Silent Hill, it would be their own damn fault, and the National Park Service would not be held responsible, Augusta thought. Which was as it should be, because to explore a ruined town she had loved seemed to Augusta even worse than graverobbing.  
  
She pulled into a parking space, stopped her truck and climbed out, and noticed there was something else here as well. There were letters, large and black against what appeared to be square white plates attached to the grating that blocked Wiltse Hill Tunnel. Augusta slammed her door behind her, and saw as she looked toward the grating, the letters spelled a phrase.  
  
WE COME  
  
Which seemed strange. We come? She approached slowly. There were no other cars in the parking area, and no trace of anyone else nearby. The morning was peaceful and quiet, and Augusta heard only birdsong and the quiet, lazy sound of Toluca Lake slapping against its banks down the hill from the observation deck. Closer to the mouth of the tunnel, she noticed a metal plate with a letter that appeared to have fallen from its place among the others above. She bent down and saw a letter "L" inscribed not on a rusty metal plate but a large ceramic tile, cemented to the pavement, obviously fairly new and only artfully painted beneath its glaze to appear decrepit. And looking up at the other tiles, Augusta saw sunlight glinting off their glaze. Large ceramic tiles fastened to the grate, which itself was not the utilitarian blockade it had first appeared to be. It was constructed of sturdy steel cables woven like a basket, with letters that should have spelled, "Welcome."  
  
An art project. A plaque fastened to a rock near the tunnel's mouth explained:  
  
"WELCOME"  
  
This artwork, by South Ashfield potter Sung Yoo Ling and Pleasant River metalworker Alana Vacchs, is dedicated to the memory of the town of Silent Hill, destroyed by the collapse of the City Reservoir Dam, September 23, 1999, and to the memory of the 87 lives lost in the disaster. Toluca County's beauty heals us as we honor Silent Hill, and we will always welcome those who journey to this special place. Silent Hill's legacy of hospitality will always live on in Toluca County.  
  
Placed September 23, 2000, by the Toluca County Alliance of Arts Councils.  
  
Augusta traced the words with her fingertips, and couldn't stop the tears. She wept – for Silent Hill, and for her daughter, and for everything else she had lost.  
  
She had finally come back to Silent Hill. 


	8. A girl, nicknamed Kitty

She was tired of thinking and tired of remembering, and wanted now only to sit by the rock with its plaque, her back to the artwork, and eat the last few M&M's from the package she had retrieved, along with her backpack, from her truck. With birds singing, and the sun shining, it was actually a very nice morning. A breeze blew in from Toluca Lake, whispering through tender new leaves that speckled every tree and bush with fresh greenery. Something rustling through the undergrowth to her right, across the road and up the hill from where she sat, could have been a rabbit. A morning like this in Hot Springs or Asheville, or probably anywhere else, would lull her to sleep. But here...  
  
She refused to think of it. She didn't want to cry again, or think about the card in her backpack, the sole reason she was here. She didn't want to think about anything at all. She was weary and all she wanted to do was sit and enjoy the sun's warmth, in the cool breeze, which already carried a hint of that legendary Toluca County humidity, which every summer curled paperback book covers, mildewed velvet-upholstered furniture, seeded moss, and gave the scent of living green things to every room and every empty house closed up for even a day.  
  
But there was no time to think of anything anymore, suddenly, as from the tunnel behind her came the sound of tiny feet sprinting toward the grate, slapping against concrete and splashing through puddles. A voice, unmistakably that of a little girl, cried, "Mama! Mama!"  
  
Augusta closed her eyes sadly. Some camper's child run away from the tent and playing hide-and-seek inside dark Wiltse Hill Tunnel. Which surely was dangerous. Augusta jumped to her feet, rushed to the grate, and squinted into the dark.  
  
Though the tunnel curved slightly as it dug its way through Wiltse Hill, light filtered in from the far side, reflecting off walls now slick with moisture and moss, and shimmering off puddles collected along the tunnel floor. A little girl ran forward through the dark, sheathed in silhouette from the sunlight behind her.  
  
Any moment now she would trip and go sprawling, and start to bawl. Augusta cringed.  
  
"Baby?" she called tentatively, "Baby, slow down! You don't want to fall down and get hurt!" She knew she would want a stranger to show the same concern for her child, and hopefully she could keep this little girl safe until her mother could find her.  
  
The girl only ran faster through the dark, her voice bubbling over with delight as she called for her mama. And soon she reached the grate and burst into the sunlight that shone through it. Her face was wreathed in joy, stretched into as wide a grin as she could manage, showing beautiful, tiny, perfectly white baby teeth.  
  
"Mama, what are you doing here?"  
  
Augusta's world began to go gray at the edges as she reeled and the noise and color was leached away from everything around her. She felt cold all over, and if she made another move, she would surely hit the ground in a dead faint and break her nose against the pavement.  
  
A little girl, who couldn't be more than five, stood at the grate. Her skin, like Augusta's, was the color of dark chocolate and was smooth and perfect. Augusta had always been blessed with a perfect complexion and had hoped to pass it along to her daughter, remembering the teasing suffered even in elementary school by children who were prone to acne or scarring from insect bites.  
  
Her hair was pulled back into braids and tied with ribbons, the way Augusta had always worn her hair as a child. Untie the ribbons and brush out the braids and her hair would stand out in all directions like a dandelion gone to fluffy seed. Augusta now wore her hair oiled and pulled back into a glossy bun that was somehow both matronly and youthful, held in place with a seashell comb, which only accented her lovely face. Her daughter would probably grow up to do the same.  
  
She wore jeans embroidered with bright red hearts, and a white sweatshirt with a happy scene of Winnie the Pooh holding hands with Piglet emblazoned across its front. Augusta's secret passion was sewing, and the cheerful red hearts on the little girl's jeans were unmistakably her handiwork. And at home in her bedroom, this child would have quilts and pillows and beautiful things to hang on her walls, all lovingly hand-sewn by her mother.  
  
Dizzy, and feeling as though all her blood had drained out, Augusta mouthed the word several times before she could finally give it voice: "Baby?" she gasped.  
  
"Mama, are you okay?"  
  
"Mary-Elizabeth? Is that you?" Augusta stumbled forward, then fell to her knees against the grate, and found herself eye to eye with the little girl, whose expression of joy had given way to fear.  
  
"Mama, what's wrong?"  
  
This was wrong. It couldn't be. A coincidence – a horrible, cruel coincidence. A little black girl, five years old, named Mary-Elizabeth, wearing jeans embroidered with red hearts that looked exactly like those Augusta would have sewn for her daughter.  
  
Had she been born, Mary-Elizabeth would have been named for Augusta's mother, who had been known throughout her life as Kitty, because of her love of cats. Mary-Elizabeth, Augusta's daughter, would have been called Kitty as well. This was her chance to finally wake from this dream. No matter what else, surely this little girl, who couldn't be her daughter, would not answer to that nickname.  
  
"Kitty?"  
  
"I'm here, Mama! Are you okay?"  
  
She couldn't faint. Wouldn't let herself faint. You can't do that, no matter how much you want to – your child is more important. No matter how much pain you were in, no matter how much shock you were in, no matter how much blood you had lost, your child came first, and you must not do anything to leave her in danger. It was what Augusta had always believed. She grabbed the woven cables and squeezed until they bit into her palms, and pain shrieked a stinging alarm along her nerve endings. She could not faint and leave her child alone in that dark, dangerous tunnel, where she could fall and hurt herself.  
  
Kitty had taken a step back, and looked as though she would start to cry.  
  
"Kitty, honey, Mama's okay. I just got a little dizzy. That happens sometimes when you stand up too fast."  
  
"Are you sure?" Kitty took a step closer, then another, then placed her tiny hands – they were so warm, and so alive! – over Augusta's fingers, wrapped around the cables.  
  
Tears began to spill down her cheeks as Augusta looked into her daughter's eyes and said, "I'm sure. Oh, baby, I'm sure. It's so good to see you..."  
  
Then, her daughter was gone. An arm as black as a shadow snaked out of the darkness behind her, wrapped around her waist and yanked her backward into the tunnel. She screamed, and as her fingers were torn away from Augusta's, her tiny fingernails tore into Augusta's skin, and raked parallel gashes across her knuckles. Kitty struggled and fell forward, and reached out to her mother, and Augusta threw herself to the ground and thrust her arms through the grate. She caught hold of her daughter's hand, and the thing pulling Kitty back into shadows roared its fury.  
  
There was nothing there, though – no silhouette, no shadow, only a pair of arms descending out of nothing, whose hands now were clenched like a vise around Kitty's ankles, pulling. Kitty had begun to weep.  
  
By tugging at Kitty, the arms pulled Augusta forward. Her face hit a cable, which bit into her cheek, but she wouldn't let go of her daughter's hand. She had come too far and suffered too long to let go.  
  
But with a final vicious yank, Kitty's hand was wrenched from Augusta's grasp, and she watched as her daughter was pulled backward into the blackness to disappear, wailing and sobbing all the way. Augusta leapt to her feet and threw herself against the grating. She could still hear Kitty's screams, as she called for her. All she saw, however, was Wiltse Hill Tunnel, through which Highway 26/73 once entered Silent Hill. It was dark inside and damp, with only the faintest light entering from its mouths to illuminate the moss and puddles. There was no sign of Kitty or of the arms, as black as the tunnel's darkness, that had pulled her away, and yet her screams still echoed again and again off the tunnel walls. Someone was torturing her little girl, carrying her off into the darkness, and her little girl was afraid and crying for her mother.  
  
Held back by the woven cables of the "Welcome" sculpture, Augusta discovered agony.  
  
And then the black arms came for her. They erupted, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, from every space between the woven cables, some grasping at her while others clutched at the air. In the sunlight, they looked ghostly, yet as solid as stone, or the cables. Dozens had wrapped around her and pressed her into the cables, pulling harder and harder and crushing the breath from her lungs. She couldn't scream, in pain or surprise, and found it increasingly difficult to even draw air. The arms crushed her against the cables as she struggled and finally pulled one of her arms from their grasp, but a black arm shot out to grab it and pull it back, where other grasping hands clutched and pulled. Her arm slammed against the cables, and the pulling, tugging arms strained and her forearm broke once, then again in another place and began to bend in ways an arm was never meant to bend as it was pulled through the cables and into the tunnel. The pain was breathtaking.  
  
A rib broke, with pain like a silent gunshot. Then another rib broke, and another.  
  
The arms waved in the air, all of them reaching for her. She was stunned by the pain. Black hands pulled at her hair, and crushed her face into the cables. Hands now wrapped around her throat. Her other arm broke now at the elbow, and began to bend the wrong way, then the forearm snapped in half and was pulled through the cable grating.  
  
Her broken ribs began to splinter, and her skull to split, and the hands wrapped around her neck deftly snapped it, and she was finally free of the terrible, terrible pain, and could no longer hear her daughter's screams which still echoed through the tunnel.  
  
Then, bit by bit, she was pulled through the grating. The arms withdrew into the shadows of Wiltse Hill Tunnel and finally the birds, fallen silent since Kitty first began to scream, started to sing again as the wind blew in off Toluca Lake and Augusta's truck sat in the observation deck's parking lot in the sun. 


	9. The downhill slope

Augusta awoke with a startled snort from what might have been the most vivid nightmare she had ever endured. She couldn't remember ever having a stranger dream – she had met her daughter, who looked exactly as she had always imagined she would, only to lose her to a horrible creature that just materialized behind her and pulled her away into the darkness... and then the same creature, with its hundreds and hundreds of night-black arms had come for her and ripped her apart as it pulled her through the woven cable grate of the "Welcome" sculpture that blocked Wiltse Hill Tunnel.  
  
Wiltse Hill Tunnel.  
  
Something was wrong. The light seemed to have gone out of the day, and she knew that even if she had dozed off against the rock with the plaque attached to it, she surely couldn't have slept for more than a few minutes – so why did it seem as though dusk had come? And why was it so much colder now than it had been just those few minutes ago?  
  
And why was she lying face down on the pavement? She sat up, rubbing her arms and remembering her terrible dream, where she had watched her arms break. And felt them break – her right forearm in two places and her left at the elbow and forearm. Could you feel anything in a dream?  
  
Something was wrong. She was on the wrong side of the grate, she thought, as she climbed to her feet and looked out. Her truck still sat in the observation deck's tiny parking lot, with the public bathrooms behind it, and Toluca Lake down a steep hill to the left. She should have been able to hear the lake washing against its shores, and heard the birds singing, but the day had gone silent. It seemed to have sickened. She should have been able to see sunlight sparkling off the lake, but couldn't. Clouds had moved in, and fog, which drifted in listless wisps up from the water. The air seemed dead, motionless, and as she watched, a single snowflake, somehow stark and white as bone against her bright red truck – even with its colors washed out in the mist – drifted out of the mist and melted when it hit the pavement.  
  
A snowflake? Snow in May wasn't unheard of in Illinois, or even back in North Carolina, but it had been warm and pleasant when she had drifted off to sleep. Warm enough to sit on the pavement with her back to a boulder and enjoy the breeze and eat candy. Candy – M&M's, the last few in an old package – she pressed herself against the grate and strained to see the rock she had sat against, now to her left. She saw an empty bag, an M&M's bag, lying on the pavement. She gasped, and her hands flew to her chest, inspecting for broken ribs. She had felt them all break, one by one, but none were broken now. Her skull was whole, her arms and legs unharmed, though she had felt them all break and felt the awful, strong hands pulling and straining, crushing her and tearing her into pieces.  
  
It had been a dream. It must have been. She had died and felt every split- second of her death. Had seen her daughter – a girl who had never even been born! Had seen her daughter dragged away screaming and begging her mother to help her, borne away into the tunnel. And here she was, safe and sound and whole with not so much as a bruise, even on her neck, where those cold black hands had closed like a noose around her throat. So, if she was unharmed and very much alive, it must just have been a nightmare.  
  
But she was on the wrong side of the grate, those cables, so artistically woven into a grate, like a cage, by Pleasant River metalworker Alana Vacchs (with those expertly painted ceramic tiles crafted by South Ashfield potter Sung Yoo Ling), and her candy wrapper was out there, in the fog, where she had dropped it when she first heard the little girl running toward her through Wiltse Hill Tunnel.  
  
Her candy wrapper was on the right side of the grate, in the fog, under the clouds, in the damp chill, through which drifted another snowflake as she watched.  
  
This couldn't be happening. She turned, noticing for the first time the comforting bulk of her leather backpack weighing against her shoulders. The tunnel stretched away into shadows, with only the faintest milky light trickling in from the far opening. A ghost of a breeze that smelled of dead leaves caressed her cheek and was somehow alive – not, not alive; dead and not only dead, but decaying. It was obscene. She shivered and wiped at her face.  
  
She was on the wrong side of the grate, and this was wrong and couldn't be happening. If she was on the wrong side of the grate, she had been pulled through it, just like in her dream. There was no other way she could be here.  
  
She began to tremble. Her knees buckled and she hit the pavement, hard, and suddenly the darkness of Wiltse Hill Tunnel seemed a living, evil thing. It seemed to fall around her like a cloak, touching her everywhere with its cold and damp. It was wrong. Everything was wrong. The world she had gone to sleep in was not the world where she had awakened. She looked behind her, with her hands to her face, and saw only snowflakes falling slowly, gently, so white against her red truck. White like bone and red like blood. Bone and blood – she twitched violently and rubbed her arms furiously, and they weren't broken. She had never broken a bone in her life. Even the warmth of her skin and her flesh and her blood coursing through her veins seemed wrong. It seemed wrong to be alive...  
  
Her right hand stung and throbbed, she noticed. In her dream, as the thing with its arms had dragged her daughter away, Kitty's fingernails had scratched her and left their marks. She looked closely at the back of her hand and discovered dried blood there, and four parallel scratches. It hurt when she moved her fingers. When her knuckles bent, the cuts opened up. When she relaxed her fingers the cuts pressed closed and clotting blood squelched out, but they seemed close to scabbing over. She should probably wrap a cloth around her knuckles until she could wash out the cuts and properly clean and bandage them –  
  
And it came to her and hit with shattering force that rocked her back on her heels – if she was on the wrong side of the grate, with slashes across her knuckles, her dream might not have been a dream. That meant, somewhere a little girl – her little girl – might be alone and afraid, and probably hurt. If the monsters of her dream were real, so too was the angel who had raked her nails across the back of Augusta's right hand. So, nothing else mattered. This situation, this insane impossibility – this thing that was all wrong – was no longer important. It didn't matter if she had died and been pulled in pieces through a grate. It didn't matter that she was now alive and feeling not only well but refreshed, as though she had awakened from a deep and much-needed sleep. It didn't matter whether she had dreamed a dream that seemed to have made itself real or had experienced something real that seemed to have made itself a dream, and that somewhere in the space between sleeping and waking, or dying and living again, the world outside had snapped its moorings and drifted into a snowy, foggy dusk. Nothing mattered except the fact that if the rest of it was real, so was the little girl in her jeans with the bright red hearts and her Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt. The little girl named Mary-Elizabeth, called Kitty. Just like Augusta's mother. The girl who looked in person just as Augusta had always pictured her with her beaming smile and dark skin and braids.  
  
The little girl who had called her Mama, and who had sent her a Mother's Day card. She was out there, somewhere, wherever she had been dragged away to by the killing black arms with their strong, cold hands.  
  
Augusta stood. Her skin tingled and her muscles twitched with an overpowering sensation that the entire world had somehow... slipped. But there was no time to think of that now. A little girl was out there, somewhere, and needed her. She would think about everything else later. She took a step and nearly fell, as though the ground was tilting. A flash of dizziness, just an instant, exploded like a flare as it seemed that everything around her, in front and behind, was superimposed against itself for a moment. Something false draped over something real. She took another step forward and the vertigo passed. She stepped forward. The ground felt solid and level, though pocked with potholes where, over the course of five Illinois winters, water in the old tunnel had frozen and thawed and frozen and thawed, and heaved up the pavement in chunks like fat puzzle pieces. Her foot sank into a hole full of cold, stale water, and the feeling of unreality that cloaked the world was ripped apart. Of course, it was still cold and gloomy and things – the darkness and damp and cold air – that should not feel alive still felt alive with an intelligence that was wrong. And she was still on the wrong side of the grate.  
  
But somewhere, her daughter might need her, might be waiting for her to find her and save her from God only knew what. So she walked on through the tunnel.  
  
*  
  
At the far end of Wiltse Hill Tunnel, she stepped into a world of mist, where the silence was overpowering, but at least there seemed to be more light, if only a little. The damp and mist pressed in on all sides, and seemed to be inspecting her, observing her with the drooling lechery of a rapist. Her muscles twitched again. The feeling of being watched was overpowering, made worse because she could barely see more than a few yards ahead. The fog and falling snowflakes blotted out the world.  
  
East of the tunnel, the ground on which Highway 26/73 rested was much higher than that on the tunnel's west side, where Nathan Avenue had once observed the South Vale neighborhood of Silent Hill from a lofty perch atop a stone causeway that gently descended to the level lakeshore and South Vale's small grid of streets. The Wiltse Memorial Greenway, and tiny, narrow Vacchs Road passed beneath Nathan Avenue, cutting through the causeway walls with large archways. As she walked along, straining to see and hear in this world of swirling damp, Augusta wondered what she would see if the fog were gone. Mud flats, with ruined walls protruding like broken teeth here and there? A field of saplings and bushes perhaps? There was a town here once. A thriving city of more than 20,000 people. It was gone now. What was left?  
  
Nathan Avenue was pitted and worn, and crumbling. Vines heaved themselves over the causeway's railings like invaders breaching the walls of a castle, and sprawled in the roadway. To her right, a sign loomed suddenly, as if it had reared up on its own accord, the dead springing back to life.  
  
WELCOME TO HISTORIC SILENT HILL  
Founded 1828  
  
Large round wooden seals bearing the logos of Silent Hill's various civic groups ringed the sign. There was the Elks Club logo and the Lions Club, the Civitans and Jaycees, Knights of Columbus, and a dozen others.  
  
There was a town here, thought Augusta. It's gone now. The sign and the clubs' seals looked battered, and were strangled with vines. The feeling of unreality rose up again in a wave. Augusta stopped, struck motionless by vertigo. Her ears rang with the silence, and she closed her eyes and drew in a dozen deep, long breaths until the feeling of motion sickness passed. What was going on here? She sighed and stood and looked at the sign with its vines dangling limply in the mist. Then she walked on, following the slope of Nathan Avenue. Not far past the sign she passed over the Wiltse Memorial Greenway. Though barely visible below in the fog, it seemed in remarkably good condition, a mulched path threading between the trees alongside Toluca Lake. The park service must maintain it now, August thought. There had been a sign pointing to campgrounds and a ranger station and the reforestation project back at the observation deck, after all. But the trees seemed larger than only five years' growth would allow. Maybe the wave hadn't knocked them over.  
  
Further on, Nathan Avenue, passed over Vacchs Road, another narrow trail that was more a walking path than a road. Descending toward the lakefront, Nathan Avenue was lower now and Augusta's view of Vacchs Road through the fog was clearer. Like the Wiltse greenway, it too was deserted, nothing more than an empty path between the trees, which seemed too large to have only been growing since that terrible September. If the wave had been damaging enough to devastate South Vale, wouldn't it have been strong enough to tear through the trees as well? Why were they so large? These trees looked as they had when Augusta moved away long ago; they were large and majestic, and lush. Nearer the tunnel, their branches had pressed against the roadway, and here they arched overhead, but Nathan Avenue was as pitted and pocked here as it was in Wiltse Hill Tunnel. It clearly had been severely damaged, then left to decay. Fat, leafy vines hung from the trees like tattered veils, as if they too had been growing undisturbed for decades, like the branches from which they dangled.  
  
The vertigo came again and even the mild downhill slope of Nathan Avenue was suddenly too much for Augusta, who stumbled, tripped, then fell to her knees, then onto her side. Her head spun. Had there been anything other than a few ounces of chocolate in her stomach she might have thrown up. The world suddenly seemed very false, as though if she waited a few more seconds, it would evaporate, and the sun would come out and bring with it sound and warmth, and stunted trees and a wasteland of rock and mud. Instead, the fog and silence remained, but the feeling of the ground swaying beneath her feet faded. She stood with a groan and rubbed her forehead, breathing deep to chase away the nausea. If nothing else, this cool, wet air was somewhat refreshing.  
  
She stood still as the mist drifted past and noticed, as she looked to her left, that a building had appeared not far ahead, dim and vague in the fog. Nathan Avenue was almost level now with the low-lying basin where South Vale spread its homes and businesses along tree-lined streets. A short distance ahead, if she remembered correctly, would be Lindsey Street leading away to the south, and beyond it Martin Street, then Neely Street. She stepped forward and then, with increasing steadiness, walked. As she approached, more buildings loomed in the fog. Their edges and details were indistinct and dulled, wiped away by the gloom and mist. Here and there, though, the sickly dusk light reflected off window glass.  
  
Perhaps the damage to South Vale hadn't been as severe as Amethyst had said. 


	10. Candy in the window

The building was the Ridgeview Medical Clinic, Augusta discovered. It was a large, old Victorian office building, ten stories tall and completed in 1902. In the mist its dark brickwork and crowd of turrets and stone gargoyles loomed ominously above, glowering at the shops and apartments across Lindsey Street. Dozens of Silent Hill physicians had their offices here; there were optometrists, dentists, pediatricians, podiatrists, dieticians and others.  
  
The building seemed undamaged, as did those, old and exquisite and of the same vintage as the Ridgeview Clinic, across the street, with their shops at ground level and several floors of apartments with dormer windows jutting out above. These were beautiful old buildings, and though they were sturdy and had been built to last, Augusta doubted they could have survived the kind of cataclysm Amethyst had described to her last night.  
  
Was it only last night? Her sense of time seemed to have gone awry. Amethyst might have told her about Silent Hill's destruction, and she might have read the plaque back at the entrance to Wiltse Hill Tunnel an hour ago, or a day, or a year.  
  
The trees lining Lindsey Street appeared unharmed, like the trees near the tunnel. A wave strong enough to sweep South Vale away should, at the very least, have sheared the branches from these trees, yet here they were, overspreading the street where, Augusta noticed as she peered into the swirling white fog, there were even cars parked here and there, as though their owners had simply left them and gone shopping, with every intention of coming back as soon as they found a bargain, or a special treasure they absolutely couldn't live without.  
  
It was wrong. There was a town here; it was gone now.  
  
Why did that phrase keep rising to mind? She crossed to the far side of Lindsey Street and inspected the shops, feeling the eyes of the Ridgeview Clinic building's lofty gargoyles on her back. The show windows in every store were undamaged and behind their glass stood all manner of goods, undisturbed. Here was an art gallery with paintings on easels and small sculptures on pedestals. Here was an antique shop with a red velvet fainting couch in its window, along with a pair of fancy end tables and lamps with stained glass shades. Here was a fabric shop with a display of drapes that were probably much nicer than anything its customers could create, no matter how much expensive cloth they might buy here. Here was a candy store...  
  
Augusta looked closer and pressed her nose against the glass. She remembered this store well, and had shopped here often to appease the cravings of her insatiable sweet tooth. J. Porter and Sons' Candy Kingdom. There were blocks of fudge and homemade chocolate bars in the window. There always had been, along with all manner of other candies and tempting sweets, protected from sunny days by the shade of broad, dark-green awnings. Augusta looked up to see that Porter and Sons' awnings hung in tatters from their frames, which somehow wasn't surprising. Now and then, a snowflake drifted down through one of the ragged holes. She looked back; the candy had caught her eye. It seemed to be moving – undulating, with tiny bits and trails trundling away, then back again. In the dimness she could barely see, but finally realized the candy was swarming with ants and fat centipedes and other insects. They ate their fill and crawled away, and others replaced them. And there were dead flies, a multitude of dead flies, in the window, and the tiny white cards on which the prices were marked were blanketed with dust. Augusta backed away and turned, and the silence of the street and its rolling mists and snowflakes enveloped her. There was something unutterably frightening about the candy store, with its treats and goodies left to decay. Had the ants and insects been feasting here for five years?  
  
With her back to the storefronts, she edged back toward the fabric shop watching, still feeling as though something was observing her with intense interest. Except for the rolling, heavy fog and the occasional snowflake, nothing moved on Lindsey Street. Not even the leaves of the trees that lined it. She turned and again saw the beautiful drapes hung in swales and valences, clouds of gorgeous cloth skewered on a long gilt curtain rod. At first they appeared to have been made of thick, rich-looking fabric. Yellow velvet, with an old-fashioned pattern of large dark ovals, but as Augusta looked closer, she saw that the ovals were irregular and ragged. Some were large, others small. Some weren't ovals at all, but were instead trails of something dark winding their way randomly here and there.  
  
Mildew. As if this expensive fabric had been hanging in the window a long, long time. Perhaps even five years. Five years in the mist. Augusta waited for the vertigo to come again. She stood still, and breathed deep, but nothing happened. Her body finally seemed to have adjusted to a world slid off its foundations. She stared; there were more dead flies in the window, and more dust. There were cobwebs.  
  
Five years ago, had the wave simply missed this part of South Vale? If so, why couldn't South Vale at least have been rebuilt? Why couldn't the whole town? Why was it cold and why was it snowing? A bubble of panic began to rise, and Augusta trembled...  
  
Then forced it down. Smothered it until it disappeared and was gone entirely. It didn't matter. Her daughter was somewhere out there and she had the scratches on her hand to prove it.  
  
So where would she be? The card in her backpack bore the return address of a school on Lamb Avenue in the Windowbox District. She had lived with Joseph not far away from Lamb Avenue, on St. Germain Avenue. But beyond those two ideas, she couldn't imagine even where to begin searching. Kitty had been dragged away, but where to? In the mist the silence was crushing.  
  
She sighed. The only thing to do was search. Street by street, building by building, until she found Kitty, or found a clue that would tell her where she was. She turned away from the window, and began to walk down Lindsey Street. She would go south until the road ended, then come back north on the opposite side of the street. Then she would search both sides of Nathan Avenue between Lindsey and Martin streets, then go down Martin, then up. Then search both sides of Nathan Avenue between Martin and Neely, then search Neely. Down one side, then up the other side. Street by street. Building by building.  
  
She passed the candy shop, where the insects gorged themselves on old, decaying chocolate and fudge. She passed a coffee shop, then a children's clothing shop – she peered inside and saw nothing but racks and rows of clothing, little dresses and jackets, and miniature pairs of jeans and shoes, little sweaters and T-shirts and blouses moldering in the gloom. She passed a barbershop, then another art gallery. Then there was nothing more. The building on her right had collapsed, with only a jagged ruin of wall, complete with a shattered window, remaining. The rest was gone, fallen into a chasm whose floor was lost deep in the mist.  
  
And so was the far side of the hole. There might have been nothing at all beyond it, as far as Augusta could see in the fog and flurry. She walked to her left, stepped down from the sidewalk and into Lindsey Street, following the lip of the canyon. Deep down in the mist she thought she could hear running water. Amethyst had said the underground streams beneath Silent Hill had swollen and chewed away at their walls, and caved in the streets above. But this large? She traced the chasm all the way across the street, where she found another ruined building spilling into the hole. Part of its façade had fallen into Lindsey Street as well, though. Amid the fallen bricks, broken beams, and shattered glass, broken bits of china and badly tarnished forks and spoons littered the street. This was Durousseaux's, a store that once sold fine china, silverware, and kitchenware. She stared at its ruins, stunned. There was nothing to do now but head north along Lindsey, until she got to Nathan Avenue again.  
  
She hadn't searched Nathan Avenue. Hadn't searched the woods along the roadside. Oh, Christ, she prayed. Kitty might have been lying there all along, hurt and needing her. She would never forgive herself if something had happened to her while she was down here in South Vale, pissing around and wasting time in the ruins of Lindsey Street. She had to go back.  
  
Augusta began to run. 


	11. The thing that looked like a woman

She was sprinting by the time the passenger door of a black Jeep Cherokee parked alongside the street was suddenly flung open; Augusta was moving too quickly to avoid it and collided, bounced backward, stumbled, and fell onto her back, gasping for air. The breath had been knocked out of her lungs and as she lay on the sidewalk struggling to breathe and feeling as though she were drowning, a shapely leg emerged from the Cherokee.  
  
A second leg followed the first, both clad in tight jeans that ended at dainty feet, with toenails painted scarlet, enmeshed in sandals with thick high heels. And a woman stepped down from the Cherokee, onto the sidewalk.  
  
She looked as though she were dressed for a day on the beach, with a tight, brightly colored, tiny top that was little larger than a bikini and ended well above the waist of her jeans, exposing a considerable expanse of tanned, flat belly. Her hair was curly and dark and spilled down over her shoulders; she looked exotic and...  
  
Dangerous. No, more than dangerous. Finally able to draw a breath, Augusta sat up and began to scoot backward, feeling she had to, above all else, get away from this person. The woman watched her, her eyes lost behind sunglasses.  
  
How could she see? It was already as dark as dusk. What reason could there possibly be to wear sunglasses? There was a cheerful picture of a parrot on her top, but it seemed hungry and vulture-like. There was something wrong about her. She was more than dangerous. She seemed evil, and stood without moving, like a corpse propped up despite her healthy tan and lustrous hair, and a body that looked as though it had been exceptionally well taken care of. For the first time, as Augusta scrabbled backward, an expression danced across the woman's face – a smile, small and cruel.  
  
Augusta reached to steady herself against the Cherokee's bumper and pulled herself to her feet. She glanced down and noticed a Florida license plate. Dade County, which meant this vehicle, and likely this woman, were from the Miami area. Augusta stood and looked back toward the woman.  
  
And shrieked, and nearly fell as she jumped back to get away. The woman had removed her sunglasses.  
  
She had no eyes. There were only black holes, like the eye sockets of a skull, and blood began to dribble down the woman's cheeks, like tears. Her tiny smile had widened to a hungry grin.  
  
"You brought the child?" the woman spoke with an accent, Cuban or Mexican – something Hispanic – and her voice was deep and sultry. Seductive.  
  
Blood ran down her cheeks in long trails. It dripped down onto her top, and onto the tanned skin of her cleavage, disappearing between her breasts.  
  
"You brought the child to this place?" the voice, from that face with its bottomless black pits for eyes, was unbearable. Horrifying.  
  
The woman stretched out her arms, her sunglasses dangling from one hand – her fingernails, like her toenails, were painted red as blood, and gold rings laden with every type of jewel sparkled even in the dim light, on every finger. Augusta was rooted with rapt terror. It was like a dream, her legs wouldn't respond. The woman came closer; she moved like a hungry cat.  
  
The words stretched themselves out, vile and slow like pus being squeezed from a wound – "Yoooooooo brrraaawwwttt theeeeeeee chiiiiiiiillld?"  
  
The blood was no longer dripping; it spurted and fell and landed in sunbursts on the sidewalk. It ran in torrents down the woman's face, down her neck, onto her clothing – she was bathed in crimson, and in the cool air it steamed. Even her grin had gone red. She opened her mouth and a forked tongue unfurled, and fell in a writhing cord all the way to her knees, where it whipped and thrashed and tried to catch the falling blood. She stepped closer, her arms opened wide. Augusta finally broke free of her reverie, and bolted.  
  
She threw herself to the left, around the back of the Cherokee, and fled up Lindsey Street, toward Nathan Avenue. She heard the woman – no, that wasn't a woman, but she had no idea what the hell it might be – laughing. It shrieked with glee, and Augusta heard pounding footsteps behind her.  
  
Then nothing. She halted and whirled around, and saw no sign of the thing that looked like a woman. Breathing hard, she searched the mist and saw nothing. The black Jeep Cherokee was lost somewhere behind her in the fog.  
  
And the thing that looked like a woman dropped out of the mist and landed hard in a crouch on the pavement. Her tongue lashed and danced in the air. Her hands had changed – no longer human hands, they were claws, two clutches of long, long claws with dancing jewels in their golden settings all along their length.  
  
"Silly woman..." it slurred, "I only want to thank you for the gift."  
  
Augusta was close to tears, and backed away, never letting her eyes leave that bleeding face.  
  
Child... Child. Surely not her child.  
  
From her crouch, two things happened: the thing that looked like a woman's tongue whipped back into her mouth, a serpent slipping back into its hole, and she reached for Augusta, and her arm elongated and grew, and the claws snapped tightly closed around Augusta, pinning her arms to her body.  
  
The thing that looked like a woman stood, and her arm seemed to bend at several elbows as she lifted Augusta up into the air. With the claws, as strong as steel bands encircling her, she could barely breath.  
  
"Yes, your child," crooned the thing that looked like a woman, as blood poured from her empty eye sockets. "Your daughter, the one you brought here. I appreciate the gift – I so rarely have a little one to play with. Oh, but don't you worry... She's in a place you can't go yet, but you'll be allowed in soon. Very soon, and in the meantime, I will play with her."  
  
Augusta's heart felt as though it would tear its way to freedom at any moment. She had never in her life been so frightened as she dangled in the air and stared down at the thing that looked like a woman, clutched tight in its claws. This couldn't be happening. But still she realized what the thing had said: it had her daughter.  
  
"If you have her, please give her back," she said in a choked whisper.  
  
"You haven't suffered enough," the thing said calmly, "When you have, you can see her again. That was the deal we agreed to."  
  
The surest cure for terror was fury. She hadn't agreed to anything. Augusta kicked and thrashed, and struggled to free herself, and only earned herself a warning squeeze that seemed to say the thing that looked like a woman could effortlessly squeeze her to bloody paste.  
  
"Give her back to me," Augusta wheezed.  
  
The thing regarded her with a nasty smile washed in blood.  
  
"Please," Augusta begged. Helpless tears trickled down her cheeks.  
  
"You have a road to walk first, my dear, and when you've walked it, then you may see her again. You need only simply do as I say."  
  
Augusta looked up and saw the Ridgeview Clinic building towering above, a grim castle in the mist. She hadn't realized she was this close to Lindsey Street's intersection with Nathan Avenue. If she had only been a little faster or hadn't stopped to look behind her, maybe she could have reached the avenue and escaped, and could have been searching for Kitty now. But the thing had Kitty, and might have had her hidden away somewhere ever since the arms first appeared behind her and dragged her away into Wiltse Hill Tunnel. She didn't know what to do.  
  
"Every journey begins with a single step, dear one," said the thing that looked like a woman. It lashed out with its free arm and with its snarl of claws, and smashed one of the big plate glass windows that looked into the Ridgeview Clinic's lobby. Then it threw Augusta inside.  
  
*  
  
Augusta landed hard on a sofa and lay stunned for only a second as a cloud of dust puffed up around her, before springing to her feet. Across the lobby, on the other side of the shattered window, the thing that looked like a woman waggled its claws in a jaunty wave goodbye, grinning through the blood still pouring down her face, as something dark and thick oozed down the glass of every window and door in the lobby. It stole the light and sealed her in; she knew it even as she ran toward the windows, glass crunching beneath her shoes. The last of the light was gone by the time she had crossed the lobby, and the blackness was vast.  
  
Augusta had never felt so alone. In the sudden darkness and silence, she panted for breath, her heart hammering.  
  
And she suddenly realized that in the stillness, every move she made seemed as loud as a drumbeat. And if there were things like the thing that looked like a woman outside, God only knew what might be in here. With her – she might not be alone at all. She could see nothing at all in the blackness, but turned her back to the wall anyway, while she shrugged off her backpack. She unzipped it and felt through the items inside; people who had seen the interior of her backpack were always astounded at how she managed to carry so much inside – it looks like you've got a K-Mart in that thing, a friend had once said.  
  
But at least she was rarely without what she needed, when she needed it. There was a flashlight inside, with fresh batteries. It was attached to a long strap that could be tossed over the shoulder and worn like a purse so her hands were free. She found it and brought it out, zipped her backpack closed again and slung it over her shoulders.  
  
Anything could be in the lobby, in the dark with her. Should she turn on the flashlight? If there was anything in the lobby it would be drawn to the light and come right to her.  
  
But if she fell down a flight of stairs while she stumbled around in this huge building looking for a way out – and she had to get out and keep searching, she couldn't just wait alone here in the dark – and broke her neck, she'd be no better off. And if she tripped over a table or chair, the noise would draw whatever might be lurking nearby to her as effectively as if she'd shot off a flare. And at least if she had some light, she might be able to see to run away from whatever or whoever might be inside the building with her. So she switched it on, and turned to look behind her at the windows.  
  
Which were sealed with smooth, cold cement. As if it had been there all along. For years even, because as Augusta tentatively reached out to touch it, her fingertips came away coated in dust.  
  
What was this? Cement – how could it be cement? It had been glass no more than a minute ago. The entire front wall of the Ridgeview Clinic building facing Lindsey Street had consisted of giant arched windows – display windows for the Victorian department store that had originally occupied this building more than a hundred years ago.  
  
She spun around, realizing her back had been turned to the lobby. The light from her flashlight traveled around the lobby, illuminating groups of sofas and chairs, and a reception desk, and a scattered forest of potted plants, all of which were dead. She played her light over large abstract paintings, still bright beneath accumulated dust, hanging on the walls, and across the gorgeously carved wooden pillars standing sentinel throughout the lobby. Nothing moved, but the light flashed off a large map of the building and a directory of the physicians who had their offices here, enclosed in a Plexiglas stand near the reception desk. It might show a way out.  
  
Augusta crossed the lobby warily, listening for any sounds at all. Watching for any movement as dust swirled through the beam of her flashlight, but she seemed to be alone in the lobby with the wilted, dead plants in their pots. She looked down at the stand, and began to read doctors' names before she noticed something glistening on the Plexiglas – a spray of blood, fresh and wet. There didn't appear to be much, only as much as what would result from a bloody cough – there was a runner of thick, dark phlegm as well, she noticed. It too was still wet, though she couldn't work up the courage to touch it and see if it might still be warm.  
  
Someone had been leaning on this directory when they coughed up their blood. Whoever it had been might still be nearby, and might be hurt.  
  
Damn it, she thought, frustrated and wiping her forehead with her wrist. The thing that looked like a woman had Kitty – she couldn't explain how, but she was absolutely certain of it. And she would have to suffer before she could see her again, but she would be goddamned before she simply sat here in the dark, waiting to be released. She was going to get out, no matter how. But if someone nearby was so hurt or so ill to have coughed up their blood onto the directory, she couldn't leave them behind.  
  
She would have to find the person and help them because it was what she had been raised to do, she thought as she turned away. Helping other people was paramount in this world.  
  
And often, in helping other people, you helped yourself as well.  
  
The elevators probably weren't working, but she might as well check them anyway, she thought, but she would have to hurry because to cough up blood was a symptom of something serious. She jogged away from the directory, past the reception desk to a bank of four elevators, where she pressed a button and, as she expected, nothing happened. There didn't seem to be any electricity at all. She sighed, looked for a door to the stairwell, and found it nearby. It was ajar, and she pushed it open, searching for movement. Anything could be hiding here, and could drop down on her at any moment. She looked up, searching with her light, and saw nothing but a dark stairway rising up through the building, so she began to climb. 


	12. The angel of leprosy

She found him on the second floor landing, slumped against the wall, and they regarded each other for a long moment while she stood on the stairs looking up at him. He was clearly very ill, pale and gaunt, with dark crescents under his eyes. He was bathed in sweat, and breathed heavily through his nose, sounding as though he was struggling for breath.  
  
He pointed a pistol at her.  
  
"Hi there," she said calmly, "You don't look like you're feeling very well."  
  
In her light he looked like a creature evolved in a cave, never exposed to the sun. He didn't lower the pistol.  
  
"You're human?" he finally asked, and coughed violently.  
  
"That's what they tell me. Can I come up? You look like you need help – I noticed you seem to have coughed up some blood on that map downstairs."  
  
"Prove it," he said, and Augusta began to wonder if he was insane. She valued her ability to remain calm in most situations, but having a gun pointed at her heart was still terrifying. She couldn't let him see her fear, because keeping him calm seemed the wisest tactic.  
  
"Prove that you're human."  
  
It really wasn't a bizarre question, she considered, especially if there was anything else like the thing that looked like a woman roaming the streets of Silent Hill.  
  
"Okay... How shall I do that? Would you like to see my driver's license, perhaps?"  
  
Keep him calm. That was most important, but who could say the thing that looked like a woman didn't have a driver's license? After all, she had been waiting in a black Jeep Cherokee with Florida plates and for all Augusta knew it might have driven it here itself. If her license wasn't proof enough, what else did she have to show him...  
  
"Sounds good. Nice and easy though."  
  
She agreed, and slowly slipped off her backpack. She carefully unzipped it, reached inside and withdrew her wallet, then opened it and offered it to him. He leaned forward weakly and studied it before he exhausted his strength and fell back. A tear trickled down his cheek and he lowered the gun.  
  
"Oh, thank God... I don't even know how long it's been since I've seen another person here... it feels like days and days..." his voice was weak and thready, and he suddenly doubled over, retching and coughing.  
  
But he had seen other people here, she thought. That was encouraging. She would ask him about it a little later.  
  
"Come on," she said, "If you're sick you need to rest in a better place than a cold concrete stairwell. Let's see if we can't find you a couch to lay on or something, what say?"  
  
He looked up at her as though she were an angel, then let her help him to his feet, though he never let go of his pistol. He leaned heavily on her, and she supported more of his weight than he did. She pushed open the door, and they stepped into a dark hallway beyond.  
  
*  
  
Most of the doctors on the Ridgeview Clinic's second floor were general practitioners, and when Augusta moved toward the first door, hoping to find a place for the man to rest, he said to her, "No... please. I came up here to go to a specific office – can you please take me to it? It's not much farther, only halfway down the hall."  
  
It seemed an odd thing to ask, but Augusta agreed and together they staggered down the hall, reading nameplates beside each office door before the man finally said they had gone far enough.  
  
DR. PRAHDEEP GHOSH, MD, & ASSOCIATES – "Your family doctor!"  
  
"This is it. This is where I have to go."  
  
Augusta's shoulders were beginning to cramp from supporting the man's weight. She shuffled toward the door and tried the knob, and to her relief it turned easily and opened. She pushed with her foot and it swung noiselessly inward.  
  
"Okay, bud, here we go. Help me out though; you're getting heavy."  
  
Beyond the door was a comfortably furnished waiting room – with more dead potted plants, Augusta noticed – that smelled strongly of must, as if it had been shut up for five years in the dampness of South Vale, bathed in Toluca Lake's humidity. She helped him to the nearest sofa and eased him down onto it. He sighed.  
  
"Oh God... thanks. I've run myself into the ground getting here."  
  
Kneeling, she smiled, "I know the feeling," and reached up to smooth her hair back. In the wet air it was starting to frizz, and would soon be bobbing around her head in stiff little streamers if she didn't coax it back into place now and then.  
  
His eyes widened and he sucked in a breath and recoiled.  
  
"Your hand is bleeding! Your hand is bleeding, oh please tell me you didn't touch that spot where I coughed downstairs."  
  
"What?" She reached for him.  
  
"No! No! Don't touch me, don't touch me with the hand that has a cut on it!"  
  
She drew back. "What's the matter? What's wrong?"  
  
He lay back and gasped for breath. She waited.  
  
Finally his breathing slowed and he looked at her, and she had never seen eyes so sad. "I have AIDS and I don't want to make you sick. I've never made anyone sick ever since I got this and I couldn't live with myself if I did. Please don't touch me. If you've got an open cut, it could get in... Did you touch that place where I coughed?"  
  
"No..."  
  
"Thank God." His strength seemed to be ebbing. His chest fell and struggled to rise again, and he had been scorching beneath his clothes. Someone this sick didn't need overexcitement; she had to calm him down.  
  
She smoothed her hair back again. "Um... I don't know if you got a really good look at my driver's license, but I'm from Asheville, North Carolina. Well, not originally – originally I'm from Hot Springs, Arkansas, but I moved from there to Silent Hill and from here to Asheville..."  
  
She stopped, breathed in, and started again. "Let's try that again. I live in Asheville, and I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's a pretty worldly city. We've got our fair share of men and women living with HIV, and I know a thing or two about it. In fact, I've got a friend who works at an HIV clinic in West Asheville, and I know that the chance of you making me sick, even if I've got cuts on my hand, is a long, long shot, and I don't think either one of us has to worry about that. So... you need to stop thinking about that and rest instead, okay?"  
  
In his eyes was heartbreak. She smiled at him, reassuringly.  
  
He managed a weak grin as he closed his eyes again.  
  
"I'll feel better if you don't touch me, but you're the first person in a long time not to treat me like a leper."  
  
She didn't know what to say, and the silence grew.  
  
Finally he said, "So, what brought you here?"  
  
She was taken aback, and leaned forward with a quizzical look on her face. "I'm sorry?"  
  
"People don't come here – this "here" – unless something brings them here..." he opened his eyes, "Hell, you know what you'd be seeing if you'd just come here on your own?"  
  
"I don't think I understand what you mean," she said.  
  
He looked at her. The sadness was mixed with confusion. "Surely something called you here... didn't it? I mean, you weren't just camping in the park, were you? Didn't you say you used to live here?"  
  
"Yes. Years ago."  
  
"So, what brought you back?"  
  
She looked away. "I... got a card. In the mail..."  
  
"Some people get letters," he said. "Some get phone calls. I got emails."  
  
"Who were they from?"  
  
"My ex-boyfriend. The one who gave me this disease. He got it from cheating on me, then passed it to me. He's been dead for seven years."  
  
Augusta gasped. She shivered violently, suddenly feeling cold all over. Her skin prickled. The feeling of unreality that had plagued her in the tunnel crept back like an intruder. She ignored it. Now would be the worst time for any more waves of vertigo.  
  
"You know," he said, "I just live over in South Ashfield. Always have – born and bred there in fact, and I dated Hayden for years and years before I found out he'd been cheating on me. He lived here in Silent Hill and as far as I know, so did the men he cheated on me with. I didn't know he'd made me sick until I got a cold that wouldn't go away and went to the doctor and asked why."  
  
He coughed, thickly and wetly, and something dislodged itself from a lung. He swallowed, forcing it back down before continuing.  
  
"After we broke up we never talked again, and I only saw him once or twice. Then I read his obituary one day in 1997 in the Toluca Tribune. And, two years later, the dam broke and washed Silent Hill away."  
  
He met her eyes. "I always loved the national park. I can't tell you how many times I camped in it when I was healthy. I've seen this place when it's not calling to you. There's nothing here except old walls and mud and rocks, and lots of little trees.  
  
"But when it calls to you, everything's here. After I got the emails I went into the park and came into Silent Hill from the north. Wrightwood. And this place has led me all over, as if it wants me to see it. Wrightwood, Old Silent Hill, downtown, the Windowbox District, East Silent Hill, Paleville, South Vale – it's all here, and it all looks like this. Foggy and damp, and looking like it's just been sitting here for five years."  
  
"What do you mean it led you around?" Augusta asked.  
  
""There are things out there that don't exist and I don't know how to describe them. They look human, but they're not. They've been coming after me ever since I stepped out of the park. And sometimes, it's like they're herding you somewhere, like there's somewhere they want you to go."  
  
He coughed again.  
  
"And I've been finding things. This and that, here and there like puzzle pieces, and I've had to go here to get the next piece, and there to get another piece. It's been like that for what seems like days, but I don't know... My watch stopped when I got here."  
  
"The last place I went was my ex-boyfriend's house in Old Silent Hill, and I found a note there, written on the bathroom mirror in what had to have been blood, and it said to come here because there was something here he wanted to tell me. This was his doctor's office."  
  
Augusta sat quietly, listening to his labored breathing.  
  
"You know something? I've seen a lot of blood. Hell, the rivers were flowing with it. The Toluca and the Illiniwak both and so were the Green River and Rosebush Creek, and when I stopped to rest over in Rosewater Park, the lake looked pink. It's almost as if this place throws what you're most afraid of at you. I'm afraid of my own blood. I've been afraid of it ever since I found out about what I have."  
  
"You're getting agitated again," said Augusta, "You need to rest... And don't you have any medicine? That might help you."  
  
"I haven't taken my HIV meds in about five years... they made me sick." 


	13. The waiting room

Augusta sighed and remembered a long conversation she had once had with her friend Rafaela Flores, a nurse at Western North Carolina Community Health Services, a free clinic specializing in HIV treatment, in a revitalizing neighborhood of old houses, big trees, and elderly brick store buildings in West Asheville. Rafaela mourned the death of every patient at WNCCHS, especially when a death could have been prevented.  
  
"Some HIV medicines have nasty side effects," she had said over sundaes at an ice cream shop downtown, "and people quit taking them because of it. Other times, patients recover from their initial symptoms and think they don't need any more medicine, and quit taking it. Either way, that's when their health starts that downhill slide again. I can't stand it. There are other medicines out there that won't have the side effects. And to maintain that good health, they need to keep taking whatever it is they're on. It's not hard to do."  
  
"But if they stop their medicine regimen for whatever reason, and let their bodies process the residual medication out of their system, often they can't take the medicines they were on anymore because they won't work again. HIV is a mean little fucker – it will adapt if you let it, and it will build up its defenses to a medicine if you just give it half a chance. We lost another one today because he just quit taking his medicine because he was feeling fine. A year later his HIV escalated into AIDS – that's when the T-Cell count; I know I've told you, but that's a special kind of white blood cell – drops below 200 per milliliter of blood, and won't rise again. A person without HIV's T-Cell count should be anywhere between 500 and 1500."  
  
She had paused, watching gaggles of delighted tourists walking past the ice cream shop's windows on their way to the museums at Pack Place. Then she turned back to Augusta with fury in her eyes.  
  
"But goddamn! You can keep yourself healthy even if you've got AIDS though! But when most people get that diagnosis they think their life is racing toward a brick wall, and they get an urge to "have a little fun" before the crash. This guy did drugs, drank enough to float the Battleship USS North Carolina, slept around, and God knows what all else, and this morning, two years after he stopped taking his medicines, they found him dead in Dupont State Forest. The detective talked to his doctor at the clinic, and she talked to me – said it looked like he'd used the last of his strength to hike to Hooker Falls and died there on a little beach by the river, facing the waterfall. I can't remember the last time I heard anything so sad."  
  
"Sometimes I wonder what I'm even doing," she had said. "Sometimes I just want to quit, and go work for a doctor somewhere else, some GP who treats diabetics and people with high blood pressure – people who have diseases that aren't regarded as the modern black plague. Some doctor who treats people who'll do what they're supposed to and take their goddamned medicine!"  
  
*  
  
Augusta looked back at the man on the couch. He was sallow and slick with sweat, and breathed shallowly.  
  
"I know that quitting taking my medicines was a stupid thing to do, but it's a little late to fix things. I just want to get this over with and find out what I'm supposed to learn by coming here before I die," he said quietly.  
  
Augusta shushed him. "You need to rest."  
  
He ignored her. "You know, you hear rumors all the time. Lots of people come here, and go into the park, and don't come out. Since 1999, the number of missing persons cases in Toluca County has tripled."  
  
She looked at him.  
  
"Some people do come out, though, but they're never the same as when they went in. They say they've seen things, and heard things, and felt things here in Silent Hill. If you talk to enough of the people who come out, they tell you they were all called here by someone who shouldn't have been able to call them here. Like I told you, some get letters, and some get emails, and some get phone calls – and they're always from dead people."  
  
Her heart began to beat faster. Don't show fear, she told herself. Don't upset him.  
  
"They'll always tell you they were called here to made amends for something they did wrong. Some person they've hurt – usually killed, actually – brings them here to make them face their sin and atone for it. I just can't figure out why I was called here though... I didn't do anything wrong. He gave me this disease."  
  
He seemed to be talking to himself now. "You know something else that's funny? Lots of those people who come out of the park commit suicide. You almost never used to hear about anyone committing suicide in the hotels around here, but now hardly a month goes by when someone doesn't shoot themselves, or hang themselves, or poison themselves, or slash their wrists in the bathtub."  
  
"They're always people from somewhere else," he said.  
  
"How do you know all that?" she asked. He seemed to be drifting away into some secret place, and she needed to bring him back.  
  
"Ever since I got too sick to work, I've been living off unemployment and disability benefits, and I get some help from the Capital Area AIDS Assistance Project. They bring me meals twice a week, and one of the ladies who delivers the food works as a detective in Brahms. She never gives me any details she shouldn't, but she tells me the news."  
  
"There's something wrong here," he said, "and this town... Silent Hill... There was a town here. It's gone now. It only appears when it's called someone to it to suffer for their sins... But I don't know why I'm here. And I don't know why you're here..."  
  
I do, thought Augusta. I killed my daughter – but she's alive and well here. I saw her in the tunnel. You're right... there's something wrong here. Probably more wrong than anything you or I know. And you're right that there was a town here, and it's gone now – that's all I've been able to think about since I got here and saw it standing there.  
  
He said again, "I don't know why you'd be here. You've been kind."  
  
He closed his eyes, and Augusta listened to his breath rattling up from his clogged lungs until a violent, wet cough exploded in the quiet. He turned his head to look at her.  
  
"You're right... I need to rest. So, can you please do something for me? That note on the mirror said I needed to come here to read something. I don't know what because the last word was smeared, and trailed down from the mirror and onto the counter into a big, bloody handprint. The only thing I can think of to read in a doctor's office would be medical records. Can you go find my ex-boyfriend's file?"  
  
She couldn't refuse. He was dying.  
  
"Sure," she said, "What was his last name?"  
  
"Quinn. Hayden Quinn." He sighed and closed his eyes again.  
  
Augusta stood and searched for a door with her light. She found it, next to a reception counter sealed off from the waiting room with glass partitions shut tight. She walked to the door – it was an antique, like most of the fittings in this building, made of dark oak with a large, smoked glass window. The knob was tarnished brass and turned easily, and swung silently into the blackness beyond.  
  
*  
  
The offices of Dr. Prahdeep Ghosh and his associates were lined up in a row beyond the door, facing examining rooms, rooms full of diagnostic machines, bathrooms, and labs across a long hallway. To her left was the reception desk that looked into the waiting room. Computers sat silent and dead on the counter and two swiveling desk chairs were abandoned. From the fabric seat of one chair grew a large toadstool.  
  
Abandoned for five years in the dark and the damp, thought Augusta. She wondered if Dr. Ghosh and his associates were practicing medicine somewhere else now.  
  
Every door was thrown wide, revealing rooms full of dust, cobwebs, and rust that speckled every metal surface. There were sites on the Internet that chronicled in pictures the investigations of massive abandoned buildings of every kind, including hospitals. Augusta was fascinated by the thought of such a thing, and explored such sites frequently. She had seen pictures of dozens of forgotten hospitals across the country, and while the photos were eerie, they usually showed graffiti and vandalism, at least some sign that people had come and gone even after the building had been left to rot. This was eerier, because everything seemed untouched. In one office a pencil still rested where it had been left on a yellow legal pad whose paper had been wrinkled by the damp. In another a family's smiling faces peered out from a framed photo on a desk. The examining rooms were still stocked with rubber gloves and disinfectant hand wash. Test tubes still stood in racks in a lab. A printer and an x-ray machine, and diagnostic equipment whose functions Augusta couldn't guess squatted in some rooms, their buttons and dials glued in place by moisture.  
  
In the darkness beyond her light things moved. Rats, mice, roaches, spiders, beetles, she thought. She remembered the candy in the window of J. Porter and Sons' and wondered what there might be to feast upon in an abandoned doctor's office – then decided she would rather not think about it. She spotted a refrigerator in one room with a sign on the door reading, "SPECIMINS ONLY! NO FOOD!!!" and didn't dare open it.  
  
The last room on the right at the end of the hall was full of file cabinets. There were dozens of them, all once painted a bland institutional gray, all now bearing scabs of rust. As she searched the room with her light, prowling from one aisle of cabinets to another, she thought that it probably would have been easier to look for a patient's medical records using the office's computers – were they not ruined by the same wet air that had nourished a toadstool on a cloth chair, and rusted the metal cabinets before her.  
  
One drawer of one cabinet was open. She walked to it and inspected it, and saw that it was festooned with dusty cobwebs, as though the drawer had been open a long, long time. And perhaps it had. With its information inside, perhaps it had been waiting for the man on the sofa, or for her.  
  
No, not for her, she told herself firmly. She wouldn't know anyone whose records might be inside.  
  
Quade, Nancy S. Quadrine, Alfred A. Qualk, Ronald V.  
  
Two Qualls, a Quam, a Quarle.  
  
Quattrochi, Joseph E.  
  
She reached further back. The file folders felt chalky under her fingertips, and were green with mold. Spores billowed up with every file she pulled forward, looking further back.  
  
She passed over Queen, Quick, and Quigley, then Quijosa.  
  
Quinn, Alice U. Quinn, David S. Quinn, Hayden A. She lifted it from its place, and marveled that it seemed untouched by dampness or time. There was no mold, no mildew, and the papers inside the folder were still crisp and white, as if it had been protected all this time, then specially set aside for someone.  
  
For her? For the man on the sofa in the waiting room? She shivered, and suddenly felt as though she was being watched again. Clutching the file, she walked quickly out of the room, and hated the shadows closing in behind her. Halfway down the hall she broke into a run, then forced herself to stop at the waiting room door, forced herself to calm down, forced her breathing to return to normal, steady cadence. It felt as though something in the dark had come to life and was moving, but in her light there was nothing.  
  
The dark, rotted hallway was still and silent. But still it felt as though something, much larger than a mouse or a beetle, was moving in the dark.  
  
God, help us please, she prayed. There's something bad here, in this place, and I don't know what it is. Please help me find my daughter. Please show mercy to that man in the waiting room.  
  
She felt behind her and fumbled for the doorknob, then found it and turned it and stepped backward through the open door into the waiting room, never letting her eyes leave the hallway. She was glad to close the door on the darkness, and turned. The waiting room was calm, and from the sofa came the sounds of the man still battling to breathe through thick phlegm.  
  
"I think I've got what you're looking for," Augusta walked to the sofa and kneeled down.  
  
The man looked at her. He seemed weaker than before. She wouldn't be able to get him up to her truck at the observation deck by herself, and would need help. He needed help, as quickly as she could get it for him.  
  
But what about Kitty?  
  
"Can I see it please?"  
  
"What? Oh... the file... I'm sorry," she said, "Here... let me see if I can find what you need in here, okay? Just lay back and rest."  
  
She smiled and hoped it was reassuring. "Besides, I've got the flashlight."  
  
"I had one. But I lost it in the stairwell. It rolled away and fell. I don't know where it went..."  
  
She sat on the floor, cross-legged, and opened the file.  
  
And the air was suddenly full of swirling paper. There had been no noise, no rush of air, but pages from Hayden Quinn's medical records reached the ceiling and drifted down, rustling softly as they descended. Augusta yelped her surprise and reared back. The eyes of the man on the sofa went wide and he gasped. He tried to shield his face but was too weak, and his arms dropped limply onto his chest.  
  
Pages noisily fluttered down, landing here and there. Augusta looked up and saw them drifting through the air like ghosts of doves. Her heart pounding, she looked down to see one page left in the folder, and as sheets of paper fell around her she reached to retrieve it. She lifted it up and trained her light on it, and began to read aloud.  
  
"December 19, 1992: Revealed diagnosis to patient, who became quite distressed. Interviewed patient as to possible source of infection – patient claims to have been drugged and raped by boyfriend while on trip to see concert in St. Louis. Patient claims no other sexual partners. Patient did not report incident to police, fearing embarrassment and discrimination. Patient will be placed on antibiotic regimen to fight existing bacterial infections, and will given drug to prevent pneumonia. Patent will begin anti-viral medication regimen in three weeks. Patient requests prescription for nightly sedative – claims likely difficulty falling asleep. Advised patient to try over-the-counter sleep aid until counseling session with Dr. Wong can be scheduled – patient may be suicidal, and I do not feel comfortable entrusting patient with prescription sleeping pills. – Dr. PG"  
  
The words were precisely typed and marched across the page with a horrible, calm detachment. The next entry, from January 1993, detailed the patient's reaction to the antibiotics (exhibits slight rash, mild fever), noted that he and his boyfriend were no longer together, and that patient would be sent home with initial dosages of anti-viral medications. The third entry, last on the page, dated from June of 1993 and reported the patient had not experienced any significant health problems in the last six months and was in fact thriving on his medications.  
  
"Patient reports noticeable drowsiness and constipation attributable to HIV medications, is not significantly troubled enough by side effects to consider switching to another medication. Patient's health and mood are markedly improved. Recommended patient try over-the-counter laxative. – Dr. PG"  
  
Augusta closed her eyes and swallowed, paused and steeled herself, then opened her eyes and looked up at the man on the sofa. He had gone rigid with horror.  
  
"No..." he whispered. "It's wrong... that can't be how it happened..."  
  
Augusta bit her lip.  
  
"Oh God... no..."  
  
"What happened?" Augusta asked, and laid her hand – not the hand with its scabbing cuts across the knuckles – on his. "I read it exactly as it was printed."  
  
"I'll tell you what happened," said a voice from the darkness.  
  
Augusta gasped and spun toward the source of the sound. Her light fell on a dead thing in the corner, near the door to the outer hall. She screamed and the man on the sofa made a strangled, helpless noise deep in his throat.  
  
It had once been a man. The face was pale and bloated and sat atop a body a stained and tattered suit strained to cover.  
  
Moss grew on the suit coat in feathery green tufts and pillowy clumps. A tiny lizard emerged from the folds of a handkerchief in the breast pocket – it might have once been white – and scuttled up and over the dead thing's shoulder, out of sight and out of the beam of Augusta's flashlight. The dead thing opened its mouth to speak again, and revealed a writhing mass of tiny white worms and bugs.  
  
These were the things that fed on a corpse. Augusta felt close to fainting.  
  
"I'll tell you what happened," the dead thing said again, in a voice that was choked and oily, mumbling around the worms in its mouth.  
  
"You got yourself infected when you shared the wrong needle with your drug buddies over in Bloomington back in 1989, didn't you, love?"  
  
A dead, fishy smell began to permeate the waiting room, and Augusta gagged. The man on the sofa gaped in wordless terror.  
  
"And remember how we got into that argument during the drive over to St. Louis? Remember how you thought you'd show me who was boss when I said I wasn't going to fuck you that night, and you slipped that little something special into my Dr. Pepper at the restaurant where we ate dinner?"  
  
"Isn't it funny, how I can remember what I had to drink, but not where we ate – you know I think I remember having chicken fingers and fries that night after the show," said the thing.  
  
The man on the sofa whimpered, and Augusta stared, rapt with horrified fascination.  
  
"And then, remember how when we went back to the hotel, I could barely walk and when I passed out on the bed, you fucked me? You fucked the hell out of me, actually, love... just like you always wanted to. You liked it rough, didn't you? And that time I couldn't say no or tell you to slow down or take it easy..."  
  
The dead thing's eyes were closed, and hadn't opened, and Augusta saw why. There was nothing behind the eyelids, which were sunk in and crusted over. A slop that had once been the thing's eyes had oozed from beneath its lids and dried on its cheeks a long time ago.  
  
"That was the first time we'd had sex since you used the wrong needle... Remember now? We'd had a fight – and you started it, love – and we hardly spoke to one another for a month. You went up to Bloomington so much more than you used to and you shot up with your friends there so much more than you used to, and you brought me back a gift... Is it coming back now?"  
  
"And all that time you thought I was cheating on you, when all I was doing was having coffee or dinner with friends because you wouldn't pay much attention to me... You know what I think it was? I think your brain was so fried that it made you paranoid. That's what I think."  
  
Something was moving behind the glass panel in the door leading to the hallway that sliced through the offices of Dr. Prahdeep Ghosh and his associates who were, together, your family doctor. It slapped wetly against the glass, and rattled the tarnished brass knob, but Augusta wouldn't let her light leave the face of the dead thing. She couldn't.  
  
"Can you imagine it?" said the dead thing that had once been Hayden Quinn, "You didn't get any disease from me. You got it from your buddies up in Bloomington, and you raped me and gave it to me. And then we broke up and life went on and then..."  
  
"LOOK WHAT YOU DID TO ME!" It screamed and spew of worms flew out and fell to the floor, where they writhed and twisted and folded over and over and over themselves.  
  
The door rattled in its frame.  
  
"But here's the best part," the thing said quietly, and more clearly with fewer worms in its mouth, "Everything's been set right now, and everything's back to the way it should be. And I can go on to where I need to go, and you... oh, this is indeed the best part, love... you can go to Hell."  
  
Something heavy thudded against the door, and it rattled again in its frame, louder this time, and Augusta heard the sound of cracking wood. She forced herself to turn, and darkness fell over the dead thing, and with her light she saw behind the smoked glass something huge. It writhed and moved with a profane quickness, and seemed to be made of long, wriggling stumps. But the shape was only a shadow, indistinct behind the glass.  
  
She swung her light around to illuminate the corner where the dead thing had stood, but there was no one there. There were only the tiny white worms on the waiting room carpet and a clump of moss that had fallen from Hayden Quinn's suit, and the lingering stink of a corpse seven years dead.  
  
"Please don't let it get me. I can hear something," the man on the sofa begged. His chest rose and fell as though something inside were fighting to get out, and a puddle of sweat had soaked the cushion under his head, leaving a large dark spot.  
  
"I can hear something behind the door," he gasped.  
  
Augusta searched with her light and saw nothing but the worms and the moss. The thing that had been Hayden Quinn was gone. She turned back to the door and heaved herself to her feet. The thing behind the glass had gone still.  
  
And then the glass exploded outward, and Augusta fell backward and landed on her ass on the waiting room carpet.  
  
It seemed to be made of arms, and moved like a snake. It was white, though, unlike the thing that had taken Kitty and pulled Augusta through the grating back at the tunnel. The odor of death blasted into the room with the thing, and Augusta's stomach heaved. The man on the sofa screamed weakly.  
  
It was more than arms, she saw. There were legs, and torsos, and heads. The heads' eyes were open but were clouded over saw nothing. Their mouths hung open, with their lips peeled back from the teeth. From some, long strips of flesh hung down in rotten tatters. An arm dropped off. It wore shards of broken glass from the door.  
  
It slithered across the floor, a massive, fat caterpillar of fused dead white men, toward the sofa. It swatted aside an end table, and the table and the lamp and magazines and box of Kleenex that had set atop it went flying. It rose up, and smacked against the ceiling and crushed a light fixture that fell down to the floor along with bits of plaster.  
  
Augusta screamed, and the man on the sofa screamed and tried to rise up to get away, but fell back and the thing fell upon him and wrapped him in a stinking embrace and yanked him back through the space in the door where there had once been a big, square panel of smoked glass. The glass had been an antique, like the door. Like most of the fixtures in this old building, which had been completed in 1902. The man who had lain on the sofa's arms and legs slammed against the frame where the smoked glass panel had once been, and were sheared off and fell to the floor with thick, wet thumping sounds. Behind the door he wailed, and there was the sound of something huge thrashing about in the hallway. Then nothing. The only sound was that of blood dripping down from the empty frame in the old oak door.  
  
And Augusta was alone in the waiting room. 


	14. Flowering dogwood

Very slowly, Augusta climbed to her feet, holding her breath and training the beam of her flashlight on the door. Blood trickled down the wood in lines and trails and dripped from the brass doorknob. In the frame where there had once been the pane of smoked glass, rotted flesh had sloughed off against the remaining glass shards and hung in leathery tatters. On the floor was more of it, like crumpled rags. Pale and white and bloated, the arm that had dropped off the thing lay on the carpet, and looked as though it had come from someone long drowned. Near it sprawled the arms and legs of the man who had lain on the sofa. They didn't look real; they were like a mannequin's limbs.  
  
There was silence in the waiting room, and silence behind the bloody door, but still Augusta thought, there might be a chance the man who had lain on the sofa could be alive. The thing could have simply yanked him through the door and abandoned him, and if it had, the man would bleed to death quickly if no one helped him. He might already be slipping into shock.  
  
She crept closer, praying. Please don't let it hurt me. Please don't let it still be there. Please let it have disappeared or gone away or something. Please don't let it hurt me. There was so much blood... the closer she came the more seemed to appear in her light. It had splattered the walls nearby and marked them with an abstract pattern in red.  
  
Behind the door the hallway was empty, but for more ghostly pale scraps of flesh and, she noticed, two more dead white arms and a leg. There was no sign of the man who had lain on the sofa, and no sign of the thing that had dragged him away... but she saw where they might have gone. At the end of the hallway, where there had only been another window cemented over like all the others in the building, there was now an enormous hole in the wall. Snowflakes still drifted through the dusky light outside, she saw, and the branches and leaves of a large tree were silhouetted in black against white drifting mist.  
  
She took a handful of Kleenex from a box on a nearby table and carefully turned the doorknob, wary of crumbs of shattered glass and the infected blood beaded on the brass. The door opened as easily as before and she stepped forward, navigating between pieces of decayed flesh and limbs. At the end of the hallway, the edges of the hole were coated in slick, rotted skin scraped from the thing as it had burrowed its way through. She gingerly approached, and looked out. Above the hole, the Ridgeview Clinic climbed upward, and snow sifted down. Below, a picnic table lay in pieces on the ground, and looked as though it had broken the fall of something very large. There were more arms and legs and pieces of flesh. A trail led away through brush and bushes between the trees straight ahead; she heard branches twisting and snapping in the distance as something large crushed its way through. Her breath hitched. She knew what had burst through the wall and landed on the picnic table below, now plowing a path through the woods behind the clinic. If the man had lived much longer after having been pulled through the door, he was surely dead now.  
  
She had never even asked him his name.  
  
She looked out into the mist, into the forest behind the Ridgeview Clinic. Ahead was Wiltse Hill, and to her left Nathan Avenue with its causeway rising up from South Vale, taking flight toward the tunnel. She had never even asked the man his name... Augusta was heartbroken, but Kitty was still out there, somewhere, in this town, in the clutches of the thing that looked like a woman. She had to look for her daughter, and here was her way to get out of the building and continue her search. She looked back at the dark hallway behind her, then down at the pieces of skin and flesh torn from the thing.  
  
She looked forward, at the tree and its sturdy branches, and jumped.  
  
She caught a branch and dangled in the air, with the broken pieces of the wooden picnic table ready to impale her more than twenty feet below if she should lose her grip. There were no other branches below to grab on to. The tree was a very large, very old maple, its limbs thick near the trunk, and thinner and flimsier further out. They grew up, then out. If she could work her way to the trunk, she could climb down, but the bark was slick and wet from the mist, and if she tried to swing toward the trunk, hand over hand, she would slip and fall. Tightly gripping the branch, her fingers began to voice their protest, and threatened to let go.  
  
After a moment of indecision, her heart pounding, she swung back with a grunt, then forward, then back, then forward, until her weight carried her high enough to catch the branch with her leg and hook it over. She hung with one leg on the branch and the other in empty air, still clutching the branch but relaxing her fingers, which ached and throbbed. After a moment, she pulled herself onto her stomach and rested looking down at the ground below. A pair of dumpsters blocked a narrow alley to create a small patio where Ridgeview Clinic nurses and lab technicians had probably taken their breaks and eaten their lunch at the picnic table under the great maple tree. But there were hardly any branches on this side of the tree, close to the building whose shade had stunted their growth. The rest of the tree however, was lush, with branches reaching up and out everywhere else along its trunk. It would be easy to climb down close to the trunk, so she began to scoot backward until she reached the trunk and found other branches, other handholds, to guide her down. At the bottom, she wiped her hands on her jeans and saw the dumpsters, splintered table, and a rust-flecked metal door marked "Employees Only. This is not a patient entrance!"  
  
And something else. Someone who had once worked at the Ridgeview Clinic, some nurse or receptionist, or maybe even a doctor, had liked to garden, and at the edge of the patio colorful flowers rioted on a large square plot where they had grown untended for the past five years. From above, the garden had been hidden, and camouflaged, by the interlacing canopy of large flowering dogwood trees, their blossoms like a cloud of butterflies alighted on their branches, growing along the garden's edges. At the sight of something so beautiful, untouched by the horror she had just experienced, Augusta wanted to weep.  
  
And she would, just as soon as all this was over. As soon as Kitty was safe, she would cry and scream and tear at her hair, but until then she had other concerns.  
  
She needed a weapon. The man who had lain on the sofa had said there were things that didn't exist prowling Silent Hill, and she had no choice to believe it. She had already seen two of them, the thing that looked like a woman and the thing that had dragged the man away into the woods. God only knew what else there might be.  
  
Ruined pieces of the picnic table were too splintered and studded with nails, and slick with a coating of dead, shredded flesh, to be of any use. They would rip her hands open. But nearby, at the spot where pavement ended and the beautiful flower garden began, she found them: a hoe and a shovel leaning against the wall, the tools that had helped create this garden, both entwined in a slender green vine studded with graceful, tiny white flowers. Taking care to harm the flowering vine as little as possible, she took the shovel, and was pleased to discover its handle made of sturdy steel instead of wood that would have grown mossy and spongy with rot in five years of mist.  
  
Now came time to decide. If there was any chance at all the man who had lain on the sofa might still be alive, she would have to help him. If not, she would run away to look for Kitty. She prayed for a sign, some indication of what she should do, and as she turned away from the garden and walked toward the dumpsters, she received it.  
  
She saw it, not far along the new path torn through the trees. She quietly approached and looked down at it, then kneeled. A torso lay on the ground, wearing shreds of the same red-and-black flannel shirt the man who had lain on the sofa had worn. The head was missing, and, she suspected, so was the heart. A red crater decorated with shredded flannel was gouged in the chest. Deep inside, broken bone gleamed whitely, and in the cool air, steam rose from the gore.  
  
Augusta stood and said, "I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry," and walked away toward Nathan Avenue.  
  
A numbness had overtaken Augusta, along with a sinking feeling she recognized as resignation. She remembered what the man who had lain on the sofa had said – people were called to Silent Hill, by people who should not be able to call them here, to make amends for their sins. To suffer for their sins. And she would suffer mightily before she would ever see her daughter again. If she ever saw her daughter again, and maybe, she thought, that was the point. Something had thrown an image of her daughter at her, then taken it away just to make her suffer. It might have all been an image, and she would never see Kitty again. Maybe that beautiful, perfect little girl had only existed for that instant, and now could be found nowhere on the face of the Earth.  
  
She stopped, and calmly looked down at her hand with its lines of scabs. With her left thumb and index finger, she snagged a scab and ripped it off, then stabbed her index fingernail into the wound. The pain was fresh and bright like a flare. Doubt was selfish. There was no time for it, and visions could not slice skin with their fingernails. Her cuts were real, so her daughter must be as well. That was that. She would keep searching.  
  
With the shovel weighing on her shoulder, she studied her surroundings. Fog swirled across Nathan Avenue, pouring from Toluca Lake through the trees along the shore to her right. Her ears rang in the silence. To her left was Lindsey Street, where the sinister black Jeep Cherokee was parked somewhere down the block.  
  
The thing that looked like a woman might still be there...  
  
"I have a name," said a familiar voice behind her, and Augusta gasped and spun around, clutching the shovel handle with both hands, ready to swing.  
  
The thing that looked like a woman again wore her sunglasses, without a trace of blood on her skin or clothing. She grinned.  
  
"I am Weeping Mary."  
  
"Where is my child?" Augusta leveled the shovel at Weeping Mary, as if ready to spear her with the blade.  
  
"How interesting that you'd care so much about the one you murdered."  
  
Augusta steadied her grip. "A day hasn't gone by that I haven't regretted that. I've never been sorrier for anything in my life. I've prayed more about that than anything else ever."  
  
Weeping Mary smirked. "Prayed? To your Scarred God? Imagine that."  
  
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't leave Joseph and have my daughter somewhere else, and raise her and love her, and watch her grow. Ending my pregnancy was the worst thing I've ever done in my life, and I've done nothing but regret it ever since."  
  
Weeping Mary reached up to adjust her sunglasses and for a moment, Augusta was afraid she would take them off again to let the blood flow out.  
  
"That wasn't what I was told," said Weeping Mary, "Are you sure you know what truly happened five years ago?"  
  
"I don't know who told you anything, but I know for damned certain what happened. My boyfriend talked me into having an abortion by feeding me a bunch of bullshit about us not being ready to have a child. I agreed because he made decent money and I wanted him to take care of me – I was afraid to be on my own, and I thought that maybe if we stayed together we might fall in love again, and things would be the way they were when we were first together."  
  
"I found out he'd never loved me anyway though, and just didn't want to have to deal with raising a child or paying child support. I admit I was selfish for giving in to him, and I admit I'm the one who did wrong here, but for the love of God, can't you see I'm sorry? Please give her back to me and we'll leave this place, and we'll leave you alone."  
  
Her laugh was rich and throaty. She threw her head back and her long curls shook with it.  
  
"I didn't bring you here," said Weeping Mary, still giggling, "and I couldn't care less if you leave or not. I'm not here for you, dear one. I'm here for all the children, and if you've brought me another one to play with, you can stay forever as far as I'm concerned."  
  
"If you don't care about me, why are you here talking to me? Why did you talk to me before and tell me I could have my little girl back if I just suffered enough?"  
  
Weeping Mary again wore her smirk. "Are you going to hit me with that shovel you found? I can grind you to jelly in my fist, little woman."  
  
Her arms were growing, her fingers warping and twisting into familiar, long, bejeweled claws. Augusta trembled, but held the shovel steady.  
  
"I spoke to you before and I speak to you now because, my dear, few things are ever accomplished in this world without cooperation. I'm not here for you, I'm here for the children, but that doesn't mean I can't help another who offers me a child to play with." Her words were stretching themselves out, elongating into a hiss.  
  
Augusta refused to show her fear. "I didn't offer you any child, and you're not helping me. I don't know what the hell you're talking about."  
  
Weeping Mary's claws scraped the ground, sparking against the pavement of Nathan Avenue. "You flatter yourself, dear one. What makes you think I'm speaking of you?"  
  
She opened her mouth and the long, forked tongue spilled out. She lisped around it. "You ask too many questions."  
  
And she was gone, leaping far up into the mist, hurtling upward to disappear. Augusta breathed heavily through her gritted teeth, her heart hammering. The thing – Weeping Mary – never dropped back to the ground. Snowflakes fell lazily through the fog, still melting as they landed.  
  
Augusta heard a sound in the distance, a noise like shoes scuffing against pavement as someone stumbled. She heard a whimper, a low moan of pain. It came from behind her, somewhere along Nathan Avenue, deeper into South Vale. She turned, but saw nothing through the fog.  
  
Very faintly she heard, "It hurts... Mama where are you...? It hurts so bad..."  
  
Her heart seized and her breath caught in her throat. In an instant she was running toward the sound. She left the intersection of Nathan Avenue and Lindsey Street behind. The art gallery at the corner of Nathan and Lindsey disappeared behind her, and the South Silent Hill Fire Station appeared on her left, and just beyond it she halted and her momentum nearly carried her forward onto her face. Something huddled on the curb ahead and to her left, slumped against the base of a spindly dogwood tree whose pink blossoms were bright in the gloom. She heard sobbing.  
  
"Mama... Daddy..."  
  
It was a child. In terrible pain. Augusta bolted forward to the tree, and dropped to one knee, dropping the shovel on the ground.  
  
The child looked up, and Augusta saw a girl, white, perhaps ten years old, perhaps eleven. Tears streamed down her face. Her clothing was old- fashioned: a blue and white checked dress, and a light blue cardigan sweater, knee socks, and black-and-white saddle oxfords. Her hair was short and curly.  
  
Her clothing below her waist was drenched in crimson and Augusta saw a dark trail leading away along the sidewalk until it disappeared in the mist.  
  
"Oh God... Oh, honey, what's wrong? Where are you hurt?"  
  
The girl violently shook her head, flinging tears and a thin streamer of mucus from her running nose.  
  
Augusta reached forward, and the girl shrieked.  
  
"Honey, please! Let me help you – please tell me where it hurts."  
  
"I-I c-c-can't," the girl sobbed, "I can't... It's b-bad... I want my m-mama and d-d-daddy..."  
  
"I'll help you find them, baby, I promise, but you need to let me help you now."  
  
"Noooooooooo!" she wailed.  
  
Augusta used both hands to steady the girl's head, a hand on each tear- soaked cheek. She looked into her eyes. "I promise you – I promise you – that I will not hurt you, and that I will help you find your parents. But, you have to let me help you. You're bleeding and we need to take care of that. Do you understand?"  
  
The girl only wept.  
  
"Can you stand up?"  
  
The girl shook her head.  
  
"Then show me where you're hurt, and maybe we can do something about it right here."  
  
"I can't... It's bad."  
  
There was very little blood above the girl's waist...which meant... Augusta swallowed.  
  
"Sweetheart, if someone's hurt you down there you still need to show me so I can help you. You can show me what's wrong. It's okay."  
  
The girl stared into Augusta's eyes, still weeping.  
  
"You can trust me. I promise." Augusta clasped her hands across her stomach.  
  
The girl closed her eyes, still sniffling, trying and failing to hold in her tears. Very slowly, she reached down and lifted her skirt. Her bony knees emerged, and her thighs, all streaked with red. Under her skirt, she wore frilly shorts that probably had once been white. Something large protruded between her legs.  
  
The handle of an enormous knife.  
  
"Sweet Jesus!" Augusta gasped, "Who did this to you, baby?"  
  
"Mr. Sullivan did it," she choked through her tears, and dropped her skirt, which slapped wetly against her legs.  
  
Augusta's mind raced. This child had already lost a tremendous amount of blood. To pull out the knife would worsen the damage, but if left alone it would cut and stab with every movement the girl made. Maybe if she removed the knife and stuffed the wound with gauze or cloth... If she tried to find help, the girl might bleed to death in the meantime. She looked back toward the fire station. Would there be anything helpful inside? Wouldn't a fire station have first aid kits, if nothing else?  
  
But this wound was far too severe to be helped by anything in a first aid kit. Augusta didn't know what to do.  
  
"He still has Billy," sobbed the girl, "and I have to find mama and daddy so they can go help him!"  
  
"Who's Billy, sweetheart?"  
  
"That's my brother! And Mr. Sullivan still has him... I have to get mama and daddy!"  
  
The girl struggled to her feet, slowly and painfully. Blood pooled where she had sat, dripping sluggishly into a storm grate. There were long smears of it on the bark of the dogwood tree.  
  
"Baby, please!" Augusta begged, "Be still! Be still so the bleeding will stop!"  
  
So the knife won't cut you any worse than it already has. The girl ignored her and staggered forward, tottering toward the door of a business sandwiched between South Silent Hill Fire Station and St. Stella's Catholic Church. She screamed and sobbed with every step.  
  
Augusta jumped to her feet, and looked up. The girl was heading toward a two-story building with a business on the first floor and an apartment above. Augusta followed, helpless. She couldn't guide the girl or help her to sit. Movement would only drive the knife deeper. A sign on the building read: "Locane's Grocery – Fresh Produce, Meats, and Cheeses."  
  
The door was made of wood whose green paint was cracked and flaking. There was a large glass window, and an old brass handle and brass mail slot. The door was closed. The girl passed through it and her wailing ceased, and Augusta stopped where she stood and could only stare. A smear of blood decorated the glass and peeling paint, and the girl was gone. Augusta peered through the enormous display window that occupied most of the building's façade. Inside, she saw tables and chairs, and an ice-cream counter stretching along the wall to the right. Hadn't the sign advertised a grocery store? She stepped back and looked up. The sign was gone; in its place were four plastic-and-metal letters: TCBY.  
  
What? The door was still smeared with blood that had begun to drip down in a too-familiar pattern, but the old green paint was gone. The door was now white, obviously newer and probably made of aluminum, with a black metal handle. Augusta felt dizzy. She looked toward the dogwood tree. Blood still pooled in the street, and painted the tree trunk, and trailed away up the sidewalk.  
  
What? A trail. Follow it. Augusta shook her head and wiped a palm across her forehead. The dizziness evaporated. She walked to the pooled blood, retrieved her shovel from where it lay on the pavement nearby, and hefted it over her shoulder, then began to walk, following the trail of bloody spatter. 


	15. The basement apartment

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Please forgive the long interval between submissions, but I work at a hotel where tourist season is getting under way! I do most of my writing at work, and it's been just too busy to write sometimes. I hope everyone's still following along and enjoying. Remember, comments are always welcome, as are suggestions and criticism, as no writer can grow without that.  
  
As she followed the blood drops down Nathan Avenue, Augusta realized, and accepted, that she had seen a ghost. She must have because no one could have lost this much blood and lived. And that explained quite nicely how the girl had passed through a door – how convenient, she thought. There was so much of it... And its source... Her stomach turned.  
  
No woman, and certainly no girl of only ten or eleven, could walk very far with a knife... that poor child. Only a little girl. She couldn't think of it. What kind of monster could do something like that? That child, whoever she was, had died in pain, and she might have died a long time ago, which would explain her old-fashioned clothing, Augusta thought. But the blood stains here on the avenue were still fresh, and a deep, terrible scarlet, so how could a girl who looked as though she had last dressed herself some time in the mid-1950's have left fresh blood smeared in the street? What would be waiting at the end of the trail?  
  
Augusta scowled and blew air through her nostrils. Perhaps the ghost of a little boy named Billy would be waiting at the end, gutted or assaulted in some way as horrific as his sister had been. Perhaps the ghost of their murderer would be there as well, waiting for her.  
  
The trail led past the intersection of Nathan Avenue and Neely Street, which led away southward. Another crater had opened in the pavement, consuming the intersection itself, and large portions of the buildings to either side. The façade of St. Stella's Catholic Church still stood but most of the structure itself was gone. Across Neely Street a shorter, stouter cousin of the Ridgeview Medical Clinic building with its rust- colored brick and dormers and gargoyles seemed to hover over the pit, one corner fallen away and looking as though the rest of the building would follow at any moment. A broad banner, barely visible in the fog, hung from the Victorian Gothic bric-a-brac along the roofline, advertising "Silent Hill Lofts! Enjoy Urban Living in the New South Vale!" with a number to call. Augusta idly wondered as she hurried past who she would reach if she dialed it.  
  
It brought back a memory. Over the years, South Vale had been modernized and "improved" almost beyond recognition, and in 1995 the City of Silent Hill had officially launched a plan to restore the neighborhood to a grandeur only hinted at by scraps like the Ridgeview Medical Clinic and the Nathan Avenue causeway that had survived unscathed the onslaught of vinyl siding, fake stucco, and sheet metal. The plan had been to fill South Vale with trees and flowers, enlarge Rosewater Park, and resuscitate the old- fashioned loveliness hiding beneath decades of poorly thought out renovations.  
  
All for nothing. It seemed so sad, but it seemed everything was sad in Silent Hill now. This was a dead town that only showed itself to the damned. But that little girl and her brother didn't deserve this. Neither did Kitty, held captive somewhere in this misty hell. No child deserved it.  
  
The blood trail, in spatters and occasional puddles, suddenly veered to the left, toward a tiny alley that ran between the Silent Hill Lofts building and what appeared to be another large apartment building. Augusta stopped and peered into the gap, and saw nothing but blood and oil stains leading along the cement. Somewhere farther back behind the building was open space, probably a parking lot for residents of the lofts and this building – Suttcliffe Place was etched in marble above a set of elaborately carved double doors crowned by a wide stained-glass fanlight. The doors were white, their woodwork gleaming pale even in the half-light. In an instant the doors were dark, almost black, like varnished mahogany. The Venetian blinds that hid so many apartments were gone, and in their place were drapes, lacy curtains, and in some windows, very old-fashioned canvas shades, half pulled, with small wooden rings dangling from sturdy cords behind the glass. Along the front of the building, a giant and obviously very old boxwood hedge had shrunk to less than half its size, into individual bushes, revealing evenly spaced wells along the building's foundation where arched windows could peer dully out at the ankles of the world from behind protective bows of wrought iron fencing.  
  
The world seemed to shift beneath her feet. She glared at the building, at the unchanged inscription above its entrance, and took several long, slow deep breaths. The feeling passed, hopefully for the last time, she thought, because I'm really sick of this. I have things to do, and this is slowing me down.  
  
A directory was protected behind glass in a brass frame bolted to the wall. Tenants. Augusta climbed a short flight of wide marble steps to a stoop in an alcove housing the doors. The girl had mentioned someone named Mr. Sullivan.  
  
J.E. Armstrong – Apt. 1-A W.A. Dodd – Apt. 1-B G.E. Stano – Apt. 1-C A. Christie – Apt. 1-D...  
  
There seemed to be four apartments on each of the building's five floors, but nowhere was there a listing for anyone with the last name of Sullivan. Not on the first floor or second, third, fourth, or fifth... but at the bottom was one other name, separated from the others.  
  
W.A. Sullivan – Apt. B-A  
  
B... B... Basement. Mr. Sullivan had rented what appeared to be the sole apartment in the building's basement. Augusta looked back toward the alleyway between Suttcliffe Place and its neighbor. If the blood led through the alley, the entrance to the basement apartment must be at the back of the building, inaccessible from the grand front entryway. How large would the basement apartment be? She glanced down at the windows in their wells along the building's base, and imagined something looking back at her from behind them.  
  
Maybe Mr. Sullivan, who had mutilated that little girl and who might still have her brother imprisoned.  
  
Augusta slowly descended the steps, her eyes on the basement windows. She walked back to the alley, and followed red drops behind the building where there was indeed a small parking lot walled in by a perimeter of large shade trees. It was empty but for what appeared to be an antique car that had seen better days, parked at the far end of the lot. Like the girl's strangely old-fashioned clothing, the car also appeared to been transported directly from the 1950's, then left to decay in the mist. Once painted an ugly shade of turquoise, it was spotted with rust and its abundance of chrome had dulled from scratches and time.  
  
Augusta stared at it, a sense of dread growing. A girl dressed in clothing from the 1950's. A car from the 50's. A murderer and another victim from the 50's? Nothing made sense. A grocery store became a frozen yogurt store. White doors turned black and a hedge shrank into infancy. She turned slowly.  
  
A small flight of cement steps led to a single door, plainer than those on the opposite side of the building. Another set of steps led downward, to an archway concealed under those leading up. Augusta approached and saw another door, white with a paned window and brass knob. Blood trailed down the stairs to the door, and a small, runny red handprint stark against the white marked the spot where, probably as an afterthought, the girl had pushed the door closed behind her.  
  
Augusta climbed down, and tried the knob, which turned, and the door swung open on a musty, lightless hallway. She switched on her flashlight and entered, making sure to leave the door open behind her. If she had to flee a horror in the basement of Suttcliffe Place, even the time it took to open a door might be too much.  
  
Dead lightbulbs were entombed above her in pearlescent white glass globes, evenly spaced along the ceiling, as the hallway led onward, then turned sharply to the right. Drops of blood spotted old linoleum that covered the floor, a generic pattern only slightly dulled by dust and the occasional dead leaf. Augusta passed a door marked "Boiler Room" and another proclaiming itself the "Storage Room." And at the end of the hall was another door, marked only with the brass letters BA.  
  
Apartment B-A, home of W.A. Sullivan, according to the directory. A fine place to torture or kill children, in its isolation as the only dwelling in the basement. And, stuff a gag in a tiny mouth to muffle the screams, and one could do as they pleased, so long as they pulled the shades in the windows facing the sidewalk. Augusta shuddered, and swallowed. The door to Apartment B-A stood ajar, and faint yellow lamplight spilled out along the linoleum, until it was consumed by the darkness of the hallway.  
  
The hallway was silent, and still as Augusta walked forward; she heard only her own breaths, and her shoes scuffing against the floor. This is it, she told herself. This is something important that might not end well. If there's something inside that apartment that's anything like what I've already seen, it could easily kill me. I'm not strong. I don't know how to fight. I don't even have a gun. I owe it to that child bleeding in the street to help her, and her brother.  
  
I have to do this.  
  
The door to Apartment B-A opened silently on oiled hinges, and behind it was a large room, an amalgam of living space, kitchen, and dining space. The living area was crowded with bulky, dark furniture that might have been new, and stylish, in the 1920's, or 30's. The kitchen, filled with a set of bloated, rounded-edged 50's-style appliances lay to the left against the far wall, separated from the living room by a long counter, and to its right was a dining room set, complete with a looming china cabinet against the wall. Three windows high up in the kitchen wall allowed dim light from outside to enter. The china cabinet backed up to a length of blank wall where, above and outside, the marble stairs led to the front entryway of Suttcliffe Place. To the right were two closed doors in a wall that ran the length of the apartment, one door obscured by what appeared to be a tiny library with bookshelves, two large red velvet chairs, and a standing lamp glowing softly. She switched off her flashlight.  
  
It was immaculate. In the living area, lamplight reflected off polished tabletops, and on a coffee table magazines were displayed in a fan. On the covers of some, men and women smiled, proud of clothes and hairstyles that hadn't been fashionable in fifty years. Augusta stepped forward, bent and picked up a magazine, and inspected the date.  
  
National Geographic, August 1954. She dropped it back onto the table, and stood. Her skin prickled, and a wave of heat seemed to wash over her. The apartment felt wrong. An aberration. The magazine had felt new, as if it had arrived in the mail only a day or two before.  
  
In the kitchen, a calendar hung under a window. She walked to it, veering around the counter, and saw that it too dated from August of 1954. A painted pin-up girl in a bathing suit grinned lustily over her shoulder at Augusta, who turned away. The kitchen, like the living area, was spotless, including the black-and-white checkerboard tiles. No blood.  
  
Carpeting, busily patterned in maroon and forest green, covered the floor space everywhere else in the apartment, too dark to show blood, she realized. Augusta turned to face the pair of doors. Near the bookshelves and velvet chairs, lamplight fell on crimson smears and stains on the closest door, and a long, bloody arc aimed downward, as though the girl had trailed her hand along the wall as she fell there. They had been invisible from the entrance, hidden by the furniture.  
  
The smeared door opened onto a spacious bathroom, and Augusta gasped and turned away, choking back a shriek.  
  
It had been white once, with a floor of checkerboard tiles that matched the kitchen. In many ways, it resembled the bathroom in Augusta's apartment, which exuded antique charm with a pedestal sink, oval mirror, clawed foot tub, and a toilet with a dark wood seat. Augusta's bathroom was a fine place to relax in a bath and enjoy a novel amid potted plants that thrived in the moisture. This bathroom had been used to kill.  
  
The girl hung from her wrists from the shower curtain rod, her arms hoisted high above her head. She wore the blue and white checked dress and cardigan sweater Augusta had seen before, and like before the girl was drenched in blood, which had dripped down to paint the bathtub, and pool in a lake on the floor. She had been stabbed, the knife driven deep inside, then hung here to bleed to death.  
  
When she had forced herself to turn again and see the girl and her blood lit softly in the gentle glow of a brass-and-glass ceiling fixture, she saw smears on the tiles and small footprints, as if the girl had fallen, lain on the floor, then staggered to her feet and gone away. As if perhaps that was what she did every so often, repeating the same action again and again and in death going in search of the help she hadn't received when alive. She had to get mama and daddy to help Billy, she had said.  
  
Where was Billy? Where was the girl's brother? The girl's head hung down as if she was ashamed of what had been done to her, her eyes closed. She was beyond help.  
  
So. What's behind Door Number 2, Augusta thought bitterly. This was wrong and she wanted desperately to cut the girl down and lay her somewhere comfortable; she wanted even more for the girl to be alive, and happy and well. She should be playing with whatever toys were all the rage in 1954 and dreaming of high school and college, her first kiss, her first date. Augusta turned away, tears stinging her eyes. The girl was gone, but perhaps there was something she could do for Billy, her brother.  
  
The second door opened on a large bedroom. Augusta could only stare. Her mind immediately recognized what she saw for what it was, but immediately slammed its doors. Immobile with shock, after a moment the more reasonable portion of her mind screamed an order to get moving.  
  
When she rushed to the bedside and dropped to one knee, the naked boy lying facedown on the bed, legs and arms lashed with thick rope to the bedposts, tried to shy away with a weak gasp, but the ropes held him fast in place.  
  
This must be Billy. He might have been nine years old.  
  
He was covered in bruises and cuts, and the quilt he lay on was filthy, smeared with blood, shit, and mucus. It stank of all three, though the stench had an unmistakable undertone of sex.  
  
"I'm going to get you out of here, okay, baby? That's what I've come here to do." She reached to him and gently smoothed his sweaty blond hair.  
  
Billy whimpered around a sock, wadded into a ball, that had been stuffed in his mouth. Augusta pulled it out, and the boy began to cry as she grimly inspected the ropes that bound his arms and legs, spreading them wide like those of a martyr about to be tortured on the rack. The ropes were rough and sturdy, scabbed with blood and pus where they had burned away the skin at Billy's wrists and ankles. Each was tied in a Gordian knot, impossible bulging tangles like bristly tumors. The ropes would have to be cut.  
  
"I have to go get something to cut these. I'll be right back."  
  
"Don't leave me. Please!" he sobbed, and his voice was dry and raspy.  
  
Augusta swallowed to keep her voice from trembling. "Just for a second, baby. Just for a second, and I'll be back to get you out."  
  
He screamed as she turned away, and the sound followed her to the kitchen, where she yanked drawers open, one after another. None contained knives, but she suddenly found what she was looking for on the counter by the stove. A wooden block held a set of knives; one was missing, probably the one driven up into the girl. Augusta shivered, in equal parts fear and fury, and snatched the largest remaining knife.  
  
She worked quickly, cutting through the knots at Billy's ankles first. When they were severed, he drew his knees to his chest, whimpering. She cut through the rope that bound his left wrist, and as she began to saw through the rope that bound Billy's right arm to the bedpost, Augusta heard a door slam. Billy began to struggle, tugging at the final rope, his legs dangling over the edge of the bed as though he wanted to throw himself to the floor and scuttle under the bed to hide.  
  
"Baby, hold still, so I can cut this!" Augusta looked over her shoulder at the bedroom door, her breath catching in her throat and her heartbeat beginning its now-familiar ascent.  
  
Tears had cut paths through the accumulated filth on Billy's face. "He'll hurt me again," he cried, "He'll put things in me again and it'll hurt. Don't let him get me. Please! Please don't let Mr. Sullivan get me again!"  
  
Checking over her shoulder again – whatever had slammed the door must be getting close – Augusta grabbed Billy's arm to steady it, and cut through the rope. As soon as it fell away, Billy yanked his arm from her grasp, and she heard a thud as he dropped to the floor on the other side of the bed and crawled under to hide.  
  
Her shovel was on the other side of the bed. She looked down and hesitated only a moment before leaping onto the bed and crawling quickly through the caked blood and shit, and God only knew what else soaked into the quilt. She dropped to the floor and as she grabbed her shovel, her eyes met Billy's.  
  
"The knife I used is on the floor on the other side of the bed. Go get it and if Mr. Sullivan tries to come get you, use it."  
  
Billy nodded, and quickly scooted backward to disappear in the darkness. Augusta stood and faced the bedroom door, clutching her shovel.  
  
Seconds later, the door was thrown open, slamming against a tall dresser and rebounding. The man who stood in the doorway held out an arm to steady it before it could swing closed again. He wore a white shirt and dark trousers beneath a long green apron – it had been a white shirt and dark trousers, and it had been a green apron; their colors were lost to blood that ran like a river from a wound in the man's neck where something – a small knife perhaps, or a fork or spoon – had been stabbed into the flesh just above his collar. In between patches of black where blood had soaked the apron, gold letters were visible: L-ca-e's Gro-y. A plastic nametag read, Walter Sullivan.  
  
Walter Sullivan's eyes were dead behind a pair of round, wire frame glasses, rolled back into his head, and only their whites showed. He stood, swaying on his feet.  
  
"Is my little boy here? The little boy I love so much?" When he spoke, blood bubbled out with the words. He waved his arms, feeling in the air, blind.  
  
He stepped forward, and Augusta braced herself, trying to breathe silently but failing. Her breath gasped in and out as she trembled.  
  
"Someone else is here..." he said, sadly, "Billy... I love you... Are you here too?"  
  
He stepped forward, staggering, and Augusta's breath rasped in and out through her gritted teeth. Her skin crawled.  
  
"Miriam won't tell, Billy... Are you sad because you thought she went to tell? Is that why you're so quiet?"  
  
Miriam. Was that the girl's name? Was Billy's sister named Miriam?  
  
"Someone else is here... Have you seen Billy?"  
  
Augusta was silent.  
  
Walter Sullivan brushed aside his work apron and began to fumble at the zipper of his trousers behind it.  
  
"Billy... I want to love you... I came home special on my lunch break so I could love you. I saw your mother and father today, and they miss you, but you like it here don't you? You like it when I love you, don't you?"  
  
Seeing what had been done to the children, Augusta's fury had been simmering since she had gone to get a knife with which to free the boy tied to the bed – at the thought of what had been done to Miriam, murdered in that horrible way, and at what had been done to Billy by this man... this dead monster shambling across the floor while he tugged at his zipper. This man had been a monster before he died. Augusta readied herself.  
  
Still staggering forward, Walter Sullivan finally unzipped his trousers, his dead fingers numb and clumsy. His penis, a flaccid, sick grub, spilled out. Augusta saw that it was a spoon, a broad-bowled soupspoon, embedded in his neck, and blood poured in a fountain from the wound. He reached the foot of his bed, rebounded off his footboard, and looked confused.  
  
"Billy, I want to love—"  
  
Augusta screamed and swung the shovel, aiming for the spoon jutting from Walter Sullivan's neck. It struck the handle of the spoon, and bent it downward, and it dug out a scoop of flesh that dropped to the floor along with the spoon. Walter Sullivan staggered sideways and fell, his neck jetting blood. He made a choked sound of surprise as he hit the floor.  
  
She dodged his kicking feet. His hands had gone to his throat, and he made a helpless mewling sound. Blood spurted between his fingers. Augusta hoisted the shovel high over her head, then brought it down, and it hit Walter Sullivan's skull with a resounding clang. She brought it up, and swung it down again with a grunt. And again. And again. This was not a man. This was a monster. He was dead yet still alive, and he was from a year that had come and gone decades ago, and so were the children he tortured and killed.  
  
Like the girl he had stabbed and hung to die.  
  
Like the boy he had help a prisoner, abusing him and destroying him in ways she could barely imagine.  
  
Walter Sullivan had stopped moving. Augusta looked down at him, panting and leaning heavily on the shovel. The blade, the handle, and her face, arms, and clothing were speckled with blood. Walter Sullivan's head had lost its shape, reduced to a lumpy slurry encased in a gory Halloween mask.  
  
Something moved where the mouth ought to be, and Augusta gasped and stepped back, raised the shovel and prepared to swing it down.  
  
"Billy..." a choked gurgle barely recognizable as a word.  
  
Walter Sullivan's blood oozed across the floor, a bright red cloud growing and swelling as though ready to unleash a storm.  
  
Even after her blood drained out, Miriam, Billy's sister, had continued to bleed. It appeared that Walter Sullivan bled too, even after the point that exsanguinations should have killed him. Would it fill the room? The apartment? Would Walter Sullivan bleed until it flooded the basement and climbed the steps one by one until it could spill along the cement outside?  
  
His hands moved, and a leg kicked weakly. In his new, wet voice he called again for Billy. Augusta's mind cried out, but I killed him – it! And then answered itself, he was already dead, and that's the only reason you could swing that shovel in the first place. You've never killed anything as long as you've lived except for bugs and a snake or two. How were you supposed to kill something that's already dead, anyway?  
  
Oh, God help me, please... a quick prayer. This thing shouldn't exist. It shouldn't be torturing these poor, poor children fifty years after it killed them. Take this thing away. Take this thing on the floor away and let them be. Please...  
  
A hand, followed by an arm, emerged from the bloody puddle, as though it was instead a deep lake and a creature on the bottom had rocketed to the surface.  
  
"Billy... want... love you..."  
  
Please, God... A second hand and arm. They seemed to be made of blood; they were wet and slick, and scarlet, and the skin appeared to flow.  
  
Walter Sullivan's right arm twitched and the left rose up, as if he was trying to turn and push himself up. His legs kicked again.  
  
Please, God... a thing erupted from the red puddle with a roar that shook the room. As in the kitchen, there were three windows in the bedroom, and the glass panes rattled in their frames. The canvas shades, which had been pulled down to hide the bedroom from anyone who might look in from the sidewalk, snapped up, each with a bang like a gunshot. Before she could turn her head away and close her eyes so tight blood throbbed in her temples, Augusta saw a thing meant for monsters.  
  
A red man, a red devil. Unquestionably male, with an impossibly long erect penis, barbs like spikes at its tip, that would split, then tear apart any woman, or man, in whom it was inserted. The red devil's face was twisted in an expression of glee that was something worse than demonic. It grabbed Walter Sullivan as it rose up, and held him close, crushing him against its chest, and it said, in a voice that was felt more than heard, "How nice of you to join us at last, dearest Walter Anthony Sullivan. Now I can love you!"  
  
"Oh, I've wanted to LOVE you for the longest time... Let's go now, Walter Anthony Sullivan."  
  
Walter Sullivan tried to scream, but couldn't through his crushed skull. His arms and legs danced in the air, and the thing that held him close to its chest giggled – an awful squealing sound like tortured metal – with delight, as it plunged back into its puddle, still clutching Walter Sullivan.  
  
Augusta huddled against the wall under the windows, eyes shut tight, hands clapped over her ears, praying. Her heart was like an animal fighting to escape a cage.  
  
She realized the bedroom had gone silent, as she recognized a familiar odor. The blood and shit were gone, and instead she smelled the dust and must of a room shut up for five years while mist rolled in from the lake outside. She opened her eyes.  
  
Walter Sullivan's bedroom was gone and in its place was another, unfamiliar. The dark wood four-poster bed with its filthy quilt was gone, replaced by a large bed covered by a zebra print comforter, with a headboard and footboard of large black metal pipes. The wooden dressers and shelves that had filled the bedroom had given way to black lacquer sets of drawers and tables. The dark green and maroon carpet had turned white, and was thicker and deeper. Above her head, Venetian blinds shaded the windows, but permitted enough light to allow thriving hummocks of moss to speckle the carpet, walls, and comforter. A vine had invaded through one window and was working its way over time to the floor.  
  
Augusta stood, blinking, then immediately dropped to the floor, remembering Billy. Under the bed was a scattering of dusty, damp shoeboxes, but nothing else. She stood and searched the room and its closet. No one.  
  
Unsurprisingly, the living room and dining room outside the bedroom door were filled with furniture she didn't recognize. She ran to the bathroom, flung open the door, and switched on her flashlight only to see an empty bathroom, its antique fixtures gone, newer ones in their place. Lights didn't work, nor did the appliances that had moldered in the humidity for five years. Behind the windows, mist rolled along the street outside. A damp newspaper was draped across one arm of a black leather sofa spotted with mold in the living area.  
  
It was a copy of the Toluca Tribune (Serving all of Toluca County since 1908), dated September 8, 1999. The headline read, "Engineer Questions Stability of Reservoir Dam." Augusta sighed and dropped the newspaper. She left the apartment, walking through a hallway that, surprisingly enough, looked exactly the same as it had before with its light fixtures like blind eyes and dusty linoleum. The ugly turquoise car was gone from the parking lot, and the blood that had led her here was missing as well. It might as well have never happened at all, she thought. She had discovered that Walter Sullivan's blood was gone from her clothes and skin, and so were the stains that had smeared her jeans when she had crawled across the bed.  
  
But her shovel... as she stood in the parking lot in what daylight there was to be had, she looked down to see the blade of her shovel dripping with blood.  
  
She ran. She didn't dare drop the shovel, as it was the only weapon she had, and it was becoming more obvious by the moment that there were things in Silent Hill now that she would need to protect herself against. But she couldn't bear to look at it, because to look at and see the monster Walter Sullivan's blood dripping form the blade was to relive what had just happened. It dragged behind her, sparking on the pavement, clanging and scraping as it bounced, echoing off the empty buildings.  
  
She ran until a large cement slab appeared on her right, standing upright with large raised letters spelling out the words, Rosewater Park. She turned and raced down a staircase leading to a brick pathway that in turn led through the park's gates, and she ran through its maze of brick paths and staircases, under its arbors, past its statues, in the shade of its overhanging trees.  
  
Then, she found a bench and dropped her shovel and sat. She stared into the mist, feeling numb. 


	16. The luncheon excursion

Sitting on the bench, Augusta held her head in her hands and stared down at the bricks in the pathway at her feet. Slick from moisture, the path appeared to have been mortared with moss. Her shovel lay on the ground beside the bench. There was still no breeze; the air was motionless and the leaves of trees in the park hung heavy with moisture, dripping occasionally.  
  
It happened every time she had ever experienced something intense – frightening, sorrowful, infuriating, joyful – she thought about it afterwards. Always. She envied people who danced through life never letting an experience trouble them, and wished she could learn to do the same. Instead, she thought it over, analyzed it, asking herself why and how and what it meant.  
  
But, she supposed, it was people who never thought about their life experiences who could sleep at night after aborting their pregnancies, and she hated to think of herself becoming someone like that. Joseph had told her once that she thought too much, but he would say something like that.  
  
As she sat, with Walter Sullivan murdering Billy and Miriam over and over in her thoughts, she realized they were all familiar, as if she had heard of them before. She realized she had, which hadn't occurred to her before in the shock of being confronted with a girl bleeding from a knife stabbed deep inside, and a dead man who wanted to rape a frightened little boy tied to his bed. She closed her eyes.  
  
Billy and Miriam... Locane. And Walter Sullivan. The names were so familiar and she realized she had read them all before. She had made it a point to learn all she could about the three cities she had lived in throughout her life, as she would with any city she might move to in the future. Whenever she found them, any history of Hot Springs, Silent Hill, and Asheville held her attention from first page to last.  
  
She knew about Hot Springs's history as the resort of choice for the mobsters of Prohibition-era organized crime. Employees long retired from the Fordyce Bath House, grandest of the Victorian bathing palaces on Central Avenue, remembered Al Capone always leaving large tips.  
  
She had read of the Trail of Tears, forced death march of the Cherokee nation from its Western North Carolina homeland to Oklahoma, and how, despite thousands escaping or hiding from the brutality and later forming the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians, a curse laid by those forcefully uprooted still haunted the land on which Asheville stood, and the mountains surrounding it. Because of that, or perhaps because it had always been a sacred place, Asheville was among the most haunted places on the planet. Legends told of monsters in the rivers, lakes, and waterfalls of Western North Carolina, and of more than a dozen races of fairies who had bedeviled even the Cherokee. To encounter a spirit, ghost, angel, or demon surprised no true citizen of Asheville.  
  
She had learned all she could about Silent Hill as well. Like Hot Springs, where whores, gambling, and gangsters shooting one another in the streets had been as much as a fixture of the town as splashing fountains and elegant resort hotels, Silent Hill had a violent past. Like Asheville, where a headless orange cat haunted the gardens at Biltmore Estate and spectral suicides fell to their deaths again and again from the roof of the Battery Park Hotel, two ghosts out of a thousand or more, it was a city accustomed to the supernatural. Like the both of them, Hot Springs with its floods and fires sweeping through with alarming regularity, and Asheville with its ferocious storms, Silent Hill had known disaster.  
  
The book was called "An Unwanted County," and Augusta had found it at the central city library. It explained how the city had come to its name, gave a short history of the Order whose followers had settled the town, and, mixed among chapters about who had built what and when, were stories of Silent Hill's violent and haunted past, written gleefully as if the author were telling the reader deliciously dirty gossip.  
  
Walter Sullivan's murder of Billy and Miriam Locane warranted mention in a chapter about the changes that came to Silent Hill in the decade after the end of World War II. In 1947 a guest upset about a discrepancy in his bill attacked the famous Fairytale Music Box in the lobby of the Lake View Hotel with a baseball bat and was arrested. The city dedicated its elaborate Veterans Memorial Gardens in Yorkshire Park, along the lakefront in East Silent Hill, in 1949. The first supermarket came to town in 1952, comfortably settling itself behind several acres of parking on Nathan Avenue, the first example of the suburban sprawl to slither along the banks of the Green River in years to come. In 1953, two blocks of beautiful Victorian buildings around the South Park were demolished to make way for an ugly motel and several shops whose buildings were constructed with an ill-thought-out Western theme in mind. That same year a rundown and vacant but still elegant boarding house called the St. James Hotel was torn down in South Vale, replaced by Jack's Inn, a motel so unattractive it appeared as though its builder had stayed up late night thinking of ways to make the building uglier.  
  
In 1954, Walter Sullivan, a trusted, long-time employee at Washington and Loretta Locane's small grocery store kidnapped their son Billy and after holding him prisoner for two weeks, killed him, and his sister Miriam. The book revealed that Miriam had been sexually mutilated and that Billy was beaten to death, though his autopsy had discovered inflamed kidneys and a perforated bowel, perhaps a sign of repeated sexual assault – all details not printed in the newspaper out of respect for Mr. and Mrs. Locane. The murders were classified only as brutal, and Augusta agreed; to be raped to death or stabbed was indeed brutal.  
  
Walter Sullivan had fled to his mother's house in Pleasant River, where he confessed his crimes to his horrified mother and was later arrested. He committed suicide in the tiny jail at the Pleasant River Police Department by stabbing himself in the throat with a spoon.  
  
It was all there, she thought. I read about it all. Why didn't I recognize what was going on?  
  
She answered herself. Reading about evil is one thing, even if it's real evil that occurred behind the doors of buildings you pass by every day. Seeing evil – reliving it – is another.  
  
Hell, she thought, staring at the bricks and moss, every book I've ever read about Silent Hill makes no secret about the fact that evil comes to Silent Hill fairly often. The only reason this town was even here is because a group of people who probably worshiped the devil finally found a place where they could sacrifice virgins – or whatever they did – in peace, where the dregs of society elsewhere in an unwanted county were too busy killing and raping one another to bother them.  
  
But, really, what was so surprising about seeing a ghost in Silent Hill? Two ghosts? Three? Four if you counted the decaying man who had screamed at the man lying on the sofa in the Ridgeview Clinic, she thought. People became ghosts by losing their lives to encounters with evil, or so she'd always read, and like Asheville, ghosts had never been unusual before in Silent Hill.  
  
Especially not in the South Vale part of town, which had once been home to the infamous Toluca Prison Camp during the Civil War, and afterwards, Toluca Prison. Worse even than the prison at Andersonville, Georgia, where captive Union soldiers had been systematically starved or worked to death, imprisoned Confederates at Toluca had been impaled or hanged, often for no reason at all. The brutality continued even after the defeat of the Confederacy when the camp was upgraded to an Illinois state penitentiary, and Toluca gained such a reputation for cruelty that prisoners often chewed open their own wrists or beat their heads against their cell walls until they dropped dead rather than be transferred there.  
  
Toluca Prison's reign of terror had continued until 1894, when crusading journalists and editors from newspapers around the state, including the Toluca Tribune, launched an effort to horrify genteel Victorian readers and demand the state close the prison.  
  
In "An Unwanted County," Augusta had read: "In an interesting coincidence, on August 18, 1894, the very day demolition of the prison was due to begin, the small peninsula on which it sat slid beneath the waters of Toluca Lake in a unexpected deluge that swelled the city's waterways, causing minor flooding damage along the Illiniwak River in East Silent Hill, as well as marked erosion of what was then a public bathing beach accessible from the fountain square that gives the South Park area of Silent Hill its name. Engineers concluded lake currents, especially those generated at the spot where Rosebush Creek empties into the lake, had been wearing away at the peninsula for some time, and that it was 'providential' the prison had been closed and vacated before the storm struck and washed the prison and the land it stood upon into the water once and for all."  
  
A worn marble monument on the south end of Lindsey Street had once explained the history of Toluca Prison further. Though now so weathered it was unreadable and useless, it detailed how the area now occupied by the neighborhood of South Vale had once been swampland – called Blood Swamp because executioners from Toluca Prison Camp had washed their execution tools in the water there.  
  
Blood Swamp had been drained, filled, and turned into South Vale by a Kansas City developer, Andrew Katz, beginning in 1895, and the monument was erected in 1900. Photographs of the dedication ceremony, with every letter carved on the tombstone-like slab stark and perfectly readable, had been stored in the archives of the Silent Hill Genealogical Society.  
  
So why the hell wouldn't you see ghosts in South Vale? Blood Swamp? Toluca Prison? Perhaps Silent Hill resembled Asheville in another way, in that there were already so many spirits trapped there, they drew others in as the curse upon Asheville was said to work.  
  
Lovely as it was – had been, Augusta thought – it wasn't as though Silent Hill was ever a bucolic paradise where people were never hurt or hurt one another. There were morbid monuments, most erected by the Silent Hill Historical Society, throughout Rosewater Park, dedicated to those who had died in various epidemics that had swept through the town during its history, a Silent Hill citizen who had fought and died in the Spanish- American War, and a woman named Jennifer Carroll, whose death had come about because of persecution by the "–ians" – Indians perhaps? – the inscription at the base of her statue, which appeared to be that of a praying woman, was too worn to read and there were no photographs anywhere, not at the genealogical society, historical society, or library that recorded what it might have originally said. Also, no book she had ever read about the history of the town could add more to what might have happened to Jennifer Carroll.  
  
But, she thought again, to read about evil is one thing. To relive it is another. What else would there be waiting for her in this city she had once loved?  
  
Augusta felt the sadness flow over her, a deep canyon of ache carving its way deeper and deeper. This was why she had tried so hard not to think about it...  
  
A whistle shrieked earsplitting in the mist and as her eyes flew open, Augusta leapt to her feet with a scream. She searched, straining her eyes but saw only the trees and bricks of Rosewater Park, and the rolling fog. She listened, but could hardly hear a thing over her heart slamming in her chest.  
  
The whistle had sounded familiar, almost like a train, but shriller. It was like... something else, something she had heard before...  
  
It came again. She had heard it before. She knew it. It was coming from the water, to which the park flowed down in terraces overhung with arbors covered in flowering vines. Most of the monuments were close to the water, overlooking a broad brick landing with a wrought iron railing studded with coin-operated binoculars. A quarter bought a view of Paleville, and the South Park section of town, downtown, East Silent Hill, and like a little green sailboat adrift, Hermit's Island lost in the great western bay of Toluca Lake.  
  
The whistle shrilled again, as though it were calling to her, summoning her. She bent to pick up her shovel and walked toward its sound. Another noise danced through the air, notes, music. An organ perhaps? It brought to mind songs she had heard in church.  
  
They sounded so familiar.  
  
Clutching her shovel, Augusta cautiously made her way through Rosewater Park, following the stairs and pathways down toward the lake. She remembered the man she met at the Ridgeview Clinic had said he stopped to rest here, and that the water looked pink. Pink from the bloody rivers and creeks flowing into Toluca Lake. She wondered what she would see, if Silent Hill tailored its horrors to each person it had deigned to torture. She imagined thousands of tiny, doll-like bloody fetuses floating in a stinking red soup, and felt her empty stomach knot.  
  
Though the whistle remained silent, the music played on and as she drew closer she realized she had heard music like this before, but not at church. Perhaps on a merry-go-round. It wasn't an organ, but a calliope spilling a bright song into the drifting fog.  
  
Where else could a person even hear a calliope, she wondered.  
  
As she descended a final set of brick steps to the landing along the waterfront, something took shape in the mist ahead. It was long and bulky and must be floating beyond the black iron railing with its binoculars.  
  
More than bulky, she realized. Huge. A boat, a ship of some kind... The calliope fell silent as she reached the bottom of the stairs.  
  
It was a riverboat, she saw, afloat just beyond the railing. Augusta could only stare.  
  
It was painted gleaming white, with dark green railings along its two galleries and trim around its windows and doors. Small brass lanterns gleamed in the murk. But there weren't any smokestacks, which seemed strange. Didn't all riverboats have those tall black smokestacks? She had spent part of a vacation in Memphis once and had seen a dozen riverboats lined up along the Mississippi River waterfront downtown.  
  
She stood at the rear of the boat, where a giant paddlewheel sat idle, but dripping, as if the boat had just arrived to dock at the park. She followed the boat along the railing, fascinated. It seemed so plain, but elegant. Simple, but beautiful. There were two decks, each with their dark green banisters. She saw a staircase leading from the first to the second deck. Doors and windows marched along behind the first deck's railing, large windows, some arched, behind the railing of the second deck. A set of fancy double doors with large oval windows appeared on the second deck, then the windows continued.  
  
A section of the iron railing was missing up ahead, and a wide gangplank lined with brass poles and dark green velvet ropes invited anyone strolling along the brick landing to come aboard. A banner hung from the railing of the second deck, white with large letters in fancy script.  
  
WELCOME ABOARD THE LITTLE BARONESS LUNCHEON EXCURSION CRUISE  
  
Augusta stopped, stunned. The Little Baroness?  
  
In "An Unwanted County," it had been in a chapter about the wonderfully profitable years Silent Hill enjoyed between the end of World War I and the onset of the Great Depression. A story of a disappearance that had always, and probably always would, remain a mystery, and a fascinating story that would rise to mind every time one looked out over Toluca Lake and the tourists on their motorboats or the yachts in the marina in East Silent Hill.  
  
Or especially if one ever enjoyed a sumptuous dinner or lunch aboard the grand riverboat that had plied the lake when Augusta lived in Silent Hill, and, if it had journeyed to safety in Pleasant River before the collapse of the City Reservoir Dam, probably still sailed the lake throughout the spring, summer, and fall. Called the Illinois Queen, it certainly had smokestacks, Augusta thought, and a giant red paddlewheel that was a delight to watch from the stern as it spun and churned and threw up spray and pushed the boat along.  
  
Excursion cruises on Toluca Lake had a long, proud history, starting in 1906 when an enterprising banker from St. Joseph, Missouri who summered in Silent Hill discovered a decrepit steamboat built in 1885, unfit to sail and listing badly to one side, for sale on the St. Louis riverfront during a trip there. He had immediately bought it, dismantled it and shipped the pieces by train to the Toluca County station in Ashfield, then by truck to Silent Hill, then reassembled and refurbished the boat, christening her the Little Baroness when finished, and officially creating the Toluca Lake Steamboat Company.  
  
Originally designed to carry up to a hundred passengers, only a handful of private suites remained. The rest had been gutted to create a grand dining saloon, though the wealthy could rent a suite and dine in private luxury as the boat cruised Toluca Lake, from Silent Hill to Pleasant River, and up and down the Toluca River to the reservoir dam and the Illiniwak to a waterfall that, while small, was still impressive for Illinois.  
  
From 1910 when the rebuilding was complete, to 1918, throughout spring, summer, and fall, the Little Baroness had offered relaxing excursion cruises and unparalleled dining in its exquisite dining room. It had been among the can't-miss experiences for visitors to Silent Hill.  
  
In November, 1918, the Little Baroness disappeared. She had set sail from the dock in South Park, carrying a wealthy South Ashfield family celebrating a birthday, who had chartered the boat especially for their occasion.  
  
She never returned to the dock, and was never seen again. No trace of the Little Baroness or any of her passengers or crew was ever found, and investigators could only conclude that the riverboat must have sunk.  
  
But here she was, placidly awaiting passengers, her paint and trim as fresh and new as they must have been in 1918. Augusta studied the windows, dull and lifeless in the fog. Apparently, the private suites were clustered together at the bow, with the kitchen and engine rooms to fill the space between their grand isolation and the big green paddlewheel at the stern. Above was the dining saloon, filled with tables draped with white lace cloths and plush velvet chairs. There would be electric fireplaces for those spring or autumn days that carried a hint of a chill, in the dining room and probably in the private suites as well. There would be dark cherry paneling, and lamps and chandeliers of gold and crystal. The tableware would be sterling silver, with beautiful china plates and crystal goblets and tumblers. In the private rooms would be exquisite oil paintings and tapestry sofas and settees. Throughout there would be the most beautiful parquet floors and oriental rugs.  
  
Augusta could only stare. There was the gangplank with its brass poles and velvet ropes, seeming to wait for her. There was the banner, hanging limply. Where was the calliope she had heard? At the rear, where it summoned passengers to their meal from the shelter of a broad roof like that of the porch of a grand mansion.  
  
Where were the whistles, to warn nearby ships of the Little Baroness' approach? At the bow on the second deck, where the boat was steered from a tiny bridge as encrusted with brass, gilt, and expensive wood paneling as the rest of the boat.  
  
And there were indeed smokestacks, she saw. Tiny, like a pair of chimneys, painted dark green, jutting up from the center of the boat like devil's horns. They could barely be seen over the roofline.  
  
Do I? She asked herself. What if Kitty is still here in South Vale? Where will this take me if I step aboard? Could I come back here if it sailed across the lake?  
  
Music began to play. The richness of a piano soon joined by a feisty cornet and a mournful violin. A cello joined in and a flute trilled. As the sound drifted down from the dining room, she recognized it as a waltz, beautiful and flowing like a stream over smooth pebbles. Was there room to dance in the dining saloon?  
  
Was someone there? Augusta hesitated, staring at the gangplank. She was relieved to see that it bridged only a space of lapping water without the pink tint of rivers of flowing blood. She looked up toward the second deck, at the endless windows and fancy doors of the dining room. The music poured from inside, warm and enveloping and seeming to show there was nothing to worry about onboard the Little Baroness. Once aboard, one only need eat and converse, dance and stroll the decks to view the beauty of a very special place called Silent Hill on its grand lake.  
  
Augusta knew better. But what else was there to do? Please let me make the right choice, she said a quick prayer, hesitated a final moment, then stepped onto the gangplank. She trailed her hands over the green velvet ropes, amazed that they felt so new and soft. The brass poles were untarnished as she passed them one by one. Then she stood on the deck and looked back to Rosewater Park and its broad, blank brick landing, and its statues and monument vague shapes in the mist. Snowflakes fell softly here and there, still melting on the ground, and like the snowflakes, the waltz still drifted gently down from above.  
  
Looking to her left, Augusta saw a staircase sweeping upward and to her right, doors and windows of the private suites. She chose the stairs, walked to them and began to climb, and noticed they and their railings alike were painted deep forest green. At the top the deck was broader than that below, wide enough for passengers to stroll and enjoy the view passing by. Behind the windows velvet drapes swooped down gracefully from valences above, bedecked with fringe and tassel. The drapes were dark green, the fringe and tassel gold. Behind the glass were the tables and chairs she had only seen in pictures. Each table was set for a meal.  
  
To her left were the fancy double doors she had seen from below, their leaded glass ovals sporting an elegant filigreed design in wrought iron. She slowly approached the doors, and saw nothing through their opaque windows. She laid her hand on the polished brass doorknob.  
  
And the whistle screamed and Augusta dropped to her knees in terror at the sound like a keening banshee so close and so sudden after the silence. And black smoke belched from the tiny smokestacks and the paddlewheel churned to life and slapped and slapped and slapped the water as the Little Baroness began to move.  
  
And as she sprang to her feet and nearly threw herself over the railing in her haste, Augusta saw the gangplank and its poles and ropes tumble into the water below her as the Little Baroness pulled away from Rosewater Park and set sail.  
  
She pounded her fists on the dark green railing and screamed through bared teeth, "Shit!"  
  
And again. "SHIT!"  
  
Inside the dining saloon, the music ceased. 


	17. Compliments of the Blue Lady

As the Little Baroness heaved itself to port, its paddlewheel spinning furiously, Augusta ran first to the little wheelhouse at the bow. There was a dark cherrywood door with a brass knob and large glass rectangle that allowed a view of a room full of dials and gauges, brass knobs and levers, all of it beautiful in a strange, old-fashioned way. The wheel spun to the left by itself, and Augusta wondered if she should be surprised to see no one at the bridge. When she tried the knob, she discovered the door was locked, and considered smashing her way through the window with her shovel before deciding it was just as well – she had no idea how to steer the boat. She sighed, defeated. The riverboat had been pointed east as it sat at the landing at Rosewater Park; now it was turning and cutting a path through the water to go west.  
  
To go where? Behind her, already Rosewater Park had fallen away into foggy murk, and the trees along the lakeshore between Nathan Avenue and the water were all but invisible. I should have seen this coming, she thought, seething. I should have known this would happen.  
  
She turned and stomped along the deck back toward the dining saloon. She laid her hand on the knob and studied the loops and swirls of wrought iron embedded in the door's large frosted glass oval windows. No one was steering the boat, though plainly the Little Baroness was on the move, and seemed to have a destination in mind. She thought surely there would be nobody in the dining room.  
  
Never mind the beautiful waltz she had heard minutes before. If the Little Baroness could steer itself, it could probably play its own piano as well.  
  
She opened the door cautiously and looked in. Just in case, because even if the Little Baroness could play its own piano, it also seemed that in Silent Hill now there were options beyond people and living creatures.  
  
The dining saloon was as marvelous as she had always seen in pictures, more so to see it in color. She had seen the dark green velvet drapes with their gold trim from outside; they had framed tables set for lunch with dishes of china – a forest green pattern rimmed with gold – and sparkling crystal and polished silver. Peeking out from beneath lace tablecloths, the tables were made of the same dark cherry wood that trimmed and paneled the rest of the boat. The chairs sported dark green velvet upholstery fastened with brass tacks to frames of the same dark wood. Their arms and graciously bowed legs were almost black.  
  
Rugs intricately patterned in dark green and yellow lay between the tables, but ahead was a wide expanse of polished parquet floor, an exquisite pattern in dark and light wood. Perhaps cherry and oak. The dark wood was reddish black, the light nearly blond. Beyond the empty expanse, a dance floor she realized, was a tiny, raised stage upon which stood a piano, its black wood fabulously decorated with carvings. There were five chairs for other musicians, and five tall brass music stands in attendance, but no instruments.  
  
The silence in the dining room was absolute.  
  
She smelled food. A delicious aroma that seemed to be coming from a table to the left of the stage. She looked, then stared. Steam rose from something on a plate, and the crystal tumbler was filled with black.  
  
She remembered she had eaten nothing since lunch yesterday except half a bag of old M&M's, and her stomach, demanding attention, let loose a long, low growl. She stepped in and quietly closed the door behind her.  
  
As she crossed the floor, the rubber soles of her shoes squeaking softly on the polished wood, she studied the room further, sure that at any moment something would leap out at her and scream or gibber through a ferocious grin, slobber or shed dead pieces of itself.  
  
Between every window, each framed in dark wood, was green silk wallpaper rising up to border of cherry wood and a ceiling of white plaster busy with carved garlands and rosettes. A crystal chandelier hung over the stage, with fancy gold and crystal light fixtures casting a soft glow over the rest of the grand room. Between the windows were gold wall sconces, each with three small light bulbs shaped like candle flames. The dining saloon blazed with electric light, and was bright, almost cheerful, despite its gloomy colors. To her left at the far end of the long room was a blank wall of the same green wallpaper above dark wood wainscoting. Three large oil paintings in gilt frames, their subjects too dingy and far away to make out, filled the spaces between four more sconces.  
  
She saw what might have been a staircase in the far right corner, probably leading down to the kitchen.  
  
A chair was pulled out from the table, away from what appeared to be a dish familiar to Augusta. Her favorite restaurant in Asheville served something very similar and though she had over time tried everything on the menu there, she found herself ordering that particular meal – a blackened tuna steak on a bed of rice and broccoli, drizzled with a spicy pepper sauce, and topped with onions, peppers, and mushrooms – again and again there. She had always reasoned that if she was going out to eat, she wanted her money's worth, and saw nothing wrong with ordering the same dish time and again if she knew for certain she would love it.  
  
She saw that the liquid in the tumbler wasn't black but so darkly red it was almost black, and fizzed, like her favorite drink, a cherry soda only sold in North Carolina and a handful of nearby states.  
  
There was a place card by the plate with a message written in elaborate calligraphy. She picked it up:  
  
Reserved for Miss Augusta Rose Jackson, compliments of the Blue Lady   
  
Augusta suddenly felt cold, and slowly lowered the card, and studied the dining room again. Again, she saw no one. There was only the long room of cherry wood and dark green.  
  
Steam disappeared in the air above the food on the plate, and tiny bubbles rose and popped in the crystal tumbler. She glanced at the card again, and the message, though written in the same intricate script, had changed.  
  
You must eat, or you will grow weak. You have eaten nothing of worth since yesterday   
  
She gasped and dropped the card and wiped her fingers on the sweatshirt knotted around her waist, as though the place card had grown a coat of slime.  
  
It lay on the floor at her feet, almost directly in the center of a dark wood square where two light strips of oak or whatever it might be, crossed in an X. The message had changed again, to something much shorter. Augusta looked away for a moment, and didn't want to, but knelt to pick it up.  
  
It is safe   
  
She crumpled the card, held it in her fist and shivered violently, then closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to uncrumple the stiff little ball.  
  
She saw again that this seat at this table was reserved for Augusta Rose Jackson, compliments of the Blue Lady, and she dropped the card on the floor and flicked it under the table.  
  
She stood. Blue Lady? Who was the Blue Lady? She looked down at the food on the beautiful green china plate with its gold rim. Her stomach growled again, its walls feeling as though they were grinding against one another.  
  
Augusta grimaced, unsure of what to do. She was famished, but had been too busy to notice before. She had to eat. The food, the vegetables, sauce, and fish looked harmless, but God only knew what they might conceal. This was a dead ship, missing since 1918 and she didn't trust what it might serve her in its dining room, compliments of the Blue Lady or not.  
  
Oh, God, I'm so hungry, she thought. If she didn't eat, how much longer could she go on before she began to weaken? How long would it be before she exhausted herself and couldn't go any further? She had read that the human body could withstand three weeks without food, three days without water, and three minutes without air.  
  
But what would happen if her hunger distracted her?  
  
Her stomach complained again, loudly, and finally she muttered, "Damn it," and sat down, and pulled the chair up to the table. She picked up the silver fork to her right and sliced through the tuna steak, which was as tender and perfectly cooked as the best serving she had ever eaten at the restaurant in Asheville. Steam rose, and with it came the wonderful aroma of blackening spices and pepper sauce. She brought the fork to her nose and sniffed at the morsel speared on the prongs. Nothing unusual. She stuck out her tongue and tasted it and found nothing unusual. She put it in her mouth and chewed carefully.  
  
It was perfect. God help me, this is probably the stupidest thing I've ever done, she prayed, and ate.  
  
The meal was excellent, perfectly prepared and cooked, and every bite danced with flavor. The tumbler was indeed filled with her favorite soda and she sipped it slowly, to make it last as long as possible. When she was finished, she glanced away, at her shovel leaning against a nearby chair, and marveled at how wrong it looked. It seemed out of place and out of its time, something modern and utilitarian in an elegant setting from another year. The shovel's handle was painted fluorescent orange, which seemed somehow an affront to the dining saloon in the Little Baroness.  
  
When she looked back at the table, she found that her plate had been joined by a coffee cup, steaming and filled to the brim and setting on a small saucer, and a dessert plate occupied by a large slice of what appeared to be chocolate pie sporting a dollop of whipped cream.  
  
She leapt up from the table, sending her chair crashing to the floor behind her. She whipped her gaze back and forth, searching for whomever could have brought her coffee and dessert. When she saw no one, she stooped and looked under the table, lifting its lace cloth for a view of the polished parquet floor and her place card wadded into a ball near one of the table legs. She stood, and shivered.  
  
"I'm not going crazy," she said out loud, again scanning the room with her eyes, "I don't know what's going on, but I know it's real, whatever it is. I'm not imagining it. I'm in the dining room of a ship that sank in 1918, and I just sat here, in this dining room, and ate lunch, and when I turned away for just a few seconds, somehow a cup of coffee and a piece of pie appeared out of the air. There's nobody nearby and there wasn't any time for someone to bring it to me, especially if they had to come up from that kitchen over there, but it's here and it's real."  
  
She stared down at the coffee and pie.  
  
"And I'm talking to myself. I am going crazy."  
  
She wanted to cry, but had to smile at the irony that she most craved sugar and obeyed the commands of her sweet tooth when she was upset. Chocolate pie. What the hell – why not? She righted her chair and sat down, and ate the pie and drank the coffee. Like her meal of fish and vegetables in pepper sauce, they were perfect and delicious. The coffee had been flavored with chicory, and the pie was light and silky smooth. When finished, she felt pleasantly full; the taste of chocolate lingered on her tongue.  
  
I'm not going crazy, she told herself again. It's all real. Everything I've seen since I got here has been real.  
  
But, she wondered, how was that supposed to be any comfort at all? How could it be comforting to think of the killing black arms, or the dead man in the Ridgeview Clinic who had spat worms when he screamed? What was comforting about the creature composed of dead white men, or Walter Sullivan torturing Billy and Miriam Locane fifty years after he killed them? How was it comforting to have a meal waiting for you at your reserved seat in the dining room aboard a riverboat missing since 1918?  
  
She answered herself as she glanced at the scabs on the back of her hand. If any of it were real, so was Kitty. And she didn't care what might come, she would search until she found her daughter. If the Little Baroness took her across the lake and at the end of her journey she learned that Kitty was still back in South Vale, she would go back to South Vale even if she had to swim across Toluca Lake to get there, and even if every drop of water in the lake turned to blood while she did it.  
  
Maybe I do think too much. I've been through this already. I already know what I'm doing here and why I keep going on instead of running hell for leather all the way back to the Wiltse greenway and up to my truck and driving away to someplace where things are still normal. I don't need to tell myself why I'm doing this.  
  
But it's so strange. Nothing here makes sense! It's like everything is inside out... Nothing has made sense since I got into Silent Hill. Nothing's made sense since I got pulled through...  
  
Stop it, goddammit! Just fucking STOP IT! She took a deep breath.  
  
Augusta pushed back her chair and stood, and reached for her shovel. She turned and as she looked over the empty dining room, she heard only the hum of the engines on the lower deck.  
  
"Okay," she thought of the Blue Lady, "Whoever you are, thank you. It was very good."  
  
In response came a piercing sob. She turned, partly in surprise, and partly in alarm, and at the far end of the dining saloon, at the green wall with its three paintings, she saw the Blue Lady.  
  
Augusta was so shocked, she dropped her shovel, which hit the floor with a clang. Her first thought was of Weeping Mary, the demon – what else could it be? – she had seen in South Vale. The monster who claimed to have Kitty, and demanded Augusta's suffering before she would ever let her go.  
  
But even from this distance, the woman in blue by the paintings seemed different, despite her olive skin and her hair, like black silk, piled high atop her head with curls hanging down to frame her face. She wore a voluminous royal blue ball gown, and in her hair were the blossoms of some type of blue flower  
  
Augusta knelt to pick up her shovel, and saw that it had nicked the parquet floor, and when she stood, she found herself walking closer and couldn't help it. She drew nearer and saw that the flowers in the Blue Lady's hair were roses. It was impossible. Blue roses didn't exist, and they must be silk, but somehow seemed real. She wore a necklace and earrings of some sparkling, bright blue gem. Bluer than sapphire. Perhaps polished lapis lazuli. She wore silk opera gloves of the same color as her gown, and wept into a dainty handkerchief the color of faded denim. All around her in the air clouds of blue formed and unformed, like drops of dye in water.  
  
It seemed like hypnotism, some kind of trance as it seemed Augusta was commanded to stop just as she had been commanded to walk. There was nothing in the world but the Blue Lady sobbing pitifully, and the paintings on the green wall. As Augusta watched, the Blue Lady pointed, but it was as though she couldn't bear to look at the paintings, and Augusta's gaze followed the pointing finger clad in blue silk.  
  
She pointed first to the painting on the left, and it was a scene of a woman in an old fashioned dress, cowering on a floor, on a rug with a pattern of vines and leaves in front of an obviously antique sofa of yellow and green velvet. A large hat bedecked with rosebuds and a veil lay on the sofa, and a man towered over the woman with an axe raised above his head. His face wore an expression of unimaginable hatred.  
  
The Blue Lady pointed to the middle painting, and in it the man was bringing the axe down. The woman appeared to be screaming or weeping, or both. Her arm was raised as if to ward off the blow, and she already wore a deep red slash across her palm.  
  
The Blue Lady pointed to the third painting, on the right, and it depicted the axe buried in the woman's shoulder, where it must have cleaved through her collarbone. And the Blue Lady pointed to the painting on the left once again.  
  
Then to the middle, then to the painting on the right, then the left, and the middle, and the right, over and over again. Her arm moved in a blur, impossibly fast, but Augusta followed its movements, at the subject in each painting as it changed every time she pointed. Augusta found herself thinking of a flipbook as she watched.  
  
The man raised the axe and brought it down, and raised the axe and brought it down, and raised the axe and brought it down. It struck the woman on her arm, opening an artery that jetted scarlet. It struck the woman in the red canyon it had opened in her collarbone and cleaved it deeper. It struck her on her chest, and sliced open the bulge of her right breast in a spray of red. Blood poured from her wounds and she screamed and cried, and begged and pleaded.  
  
The man raised the axe and brought it down, and the hatred on his face never dimmed. The room began to turn red.  
  
And at last the woman was bathed in red, her body and clothing in tatters, and she lay still on the carpet whose pattern was lost to her blood. Her head had lolled to the side and it looked as though she peered from the painting directly at Augusta. Her lips formed words.  
  
Please stop. I'm sorry.  
  
The man threw his axe aside and dropped to his knees to beat the woman's face with his fists. Five times. Ten. A dozen. A hundred, and when he was finished her face was a swollen ruin.  
  
He tore aside her blouse and layer after layer of undergarments beneath, all of them wet and red. When he reached the flesh hidden beneath, it was scored with flowing bloody trenches.  
  
She was still alive. The woman slowly closed and opened one eye, the other was gummed shut with blood.  
  
The man thrust his hands and arms into the woman's belly and tore at what he found inside. Her intestines and viscera were like ropes and he tugged and pulled them out and threw them aside, and stabbed his arms deep inside again.  
  
When he was finished her belly lay open like a bright red flower, and her bones showed, and her innards lay in a horrible, grotesque mound. He seemed to pant, exhausted, but slowly climbed to his feet, a ghoul in scarlet. He wiped his hands on the green and yellow velvet sofa, but only smeared the blood that had spattered there. He bent to pick up his axe and walked away to the left, out of view.  
  
Dimly, in the back of Augusta's mind, she realized she should have thrown up at the sight of it all. She felt oddly calm, almost peaceful.  
  
The Blue Lady was still sobbing into her handkerchief, but when Augusta turned to look, she was gone. But her sobs still resounded through the air. Augusta felt dazed, as if waking up from a fitful sleep. She felt she needed to look at the paintings again, and when she did they had changed yet again. Together, the three of them now depicted nothing more than a fancy parlor. There was no blood, and no hideously mutilated woman on the floor.  
  
Something was different, though... Standing close enough to touch the paintings, Augusta reached out and couldn't bring herself to be surprised when her hand passed through empty air beyond the gilt frames. These were no longer paintings, but openings. The room beyond was quiet, still, and dim.  
  
The dining saloon of the Little Baroness was gone and in its place, blackness. She stood on a tiny patch of parquet floor, its edges broken off in a stairstep pattern as though every wooden square beyond the remaining few had fallen away. Before her was the green wall with its gilt frames and gold sconces. The rest was a blackness pierced by unfamiliar constellations and milky swirling galaxies. The Blue Lady's sobs sounded as though they were coming from under water.  
  
There seemed to be nothing more to do but step through the empty frames and into the fancy parlor. When she did, clambering through the central frame, she felt the vertigo sweep over her and lost her balance. She dropped her shovel and it seemed that it fell a very long way before it hit the parlor carpet with a thud. And when she tumbled forward, it seemed she fell a very long way as well before landing on the green and yellow velvet sofa.  
  
It was surprisingly soft, and she wanted to close her eyes until the dizziness went away. 


	18. The ghoul in scarlet

She gave in; she closed her eyes. A million thoughts whirled through her mind – I've been seeing ghosts ever since I got here. I'm about to see a few, or a lot, more, but I can handle this because I am a Southern woman. The South is haunted. I moved to one of the most haunted cities in the South, if not the world, where my family has a long history and my grandmother can tell ghost stories that happened to her "daddy's people" or her "mama's people" that will turn your hair white.  
  
When she paused to take a mental breath, the voices began, as if they had been waiting patiently for her full attention. They were arguing quietly, but in earnest as if they hoped not to be overheard. When Augusta tried to open her eyes, she couldn't. She couldn't move. She couldn't see and she couldn't move, which was somehow more horrifying than what the Blue Lady had shown her in the paintings.  
  
She felt helpless and nauseatingly vulnerable. It was as though she wasn't there at all.  
  
The voices were that of a man and woman; Augusta supposed they belonged to the man and woman she had seen in the paintings.  
  
The woman's voice was frantic and pleading; she was upset to the point of hysteria.  
  
"I can't do that," she wailed, "I swear to God I cannot! Joshua, please believe me... Please don't ask me to do that."  
  
The man, apparently named Joshua, responded coldly, venomously. "You can and you will. This is something you should have taken care of before it got to be a problem, anyhow."  
  
The woman dissolved into tears, weeping hopelessly.  
  
"Deanna, look at you already. You're beginning to look like a zeppelin, and people are asking questions. You know as well as I do that Carl and you can't produce a child together and God knows you've tried enough times. What will people say as you get bigger and bigger?"  
  
"But you're asking me to kill!" sobbed the woman, Deanna, "I can't do that. I'm sorry this happened, but I can't tear this life out of me. It didn't ask to come into being."  
  
There was the sound of a stinging slap, then a long moment of silence.  
  
"I am a physician, and I know every other physician in this county and they all know me. And we all know that my brother might as well be rutting with a horse for all the good his semen does. If, six months or so from now you squirt out a bouncing baby bastard, people will talk and word will spread, and when it spreads my name and my family's name won't be worth horse dung in the street."  
  
"But I could go to Springfield to have the baby!" Desperation disguised as hope, interrupted by sniffling. "Or Bloomington or, if it's ready by then, the new hospital you and that Italian fellow are building here in Silent Hill! We could say there are complications the hospital in Ashfield can't cope with and no one would have to know. It won't matter what the doctors have said about Carl.  
  
"Things like this happen all the time – husbands and wives who aren't supposed to be able to have children do have them!"  
  
The man's voice was tinged with disgust now. "Just because you want something to happen doesn't mean it can or will. You can't go somewhere else to give birth just because you want to. And even if you did go to Springfield, or to my new hospital, people would still want to know why. There is no other choice – you cannot have this child."  
  
"I had hoped nothing would come of it," she said, quieter now as if dazed.  
  
"But something did come of it. And I have a reputation to think of, and a family name. Surely you know and benefit from the fact that the Blackwells are a leading family in Toluca County."  
  
"I DO KNOW IT, DAMN YOU!" she screamed with vehemence, then quietly said, "But I don't care. I will not commit murder to protect your precious family honor. I don't care if you all cast me out and leave me penniless for the rest of my life. I don't care if I have to sell myself in an alley to feed and clothe myself and this child – I will have this child and I will raise it, love it, and watch it grow."  
  
There was fury in her voice, like a stick of dynamite, lethal and only wanting a spark to ignite it. "And I will raise this child to be a better person than you. I will make sure it knows its father was nothing more than a rutting hog and that it should do all it can to ensure it won't grow up to be like you."  
  
Another slap – but it was muffled and heavier, perhaps the sound of a balled fist striking a cheekbone.  
  
Stunned silence. There was only... the hum and vibration of the Little Baroness' engines. She was still on the Little Baroness, Augusta realized. Sailing Toluca Lake on a foggy November day in 1918 with the wealthy Blackwell family of South Ashfield that had chartered the boat especially for a birthday party.  
  
Whose birthday party, she wondered.  
  
"Go ahead and hit me," Deanna hissed, "Go ahead and let everyone in the family wonder why my face is swelling with bruises when I step into that dining room upstairs. Go ahead and let your brother know you've struck his wife."  
  
"You WHORE!!" He roared, and there was the sound of his fist striking flesh again.  
  
Deanna fell, and hit the floor with a wounded gasp of pain.  
  
He began to kick her, aiming for her stomach, and said, "If you won't take care of this, I will take care of it for you. You will NOT ruin my name. You will NOT ruin my reputation, and you will NOT ruin my family's standing in this community."  
  
He paused, panting. Augusta could imagine his face already twisted into the rictus of hatred she had seen in the paintings.  
  
Deanna groaned in pain and struggled to say, "I had hoped it wouldn't, but I knew it would come to this. I'm not as frail-minded as you suppose, Joshua."  
  
Unbelievably, it sounded as though she were smiling. "I wrote all of what I told you into a letter this morning and left it under the bedclothes in mine and Carl's bedroom. Hit me, kick me, strike me again and I'll give it to him this evening when we return home. Kill me and say I fell overboard, as I know you probably want to and are capable of doing and he'll find it anyway.  
  
"Either way, I will ensure that your name is dragged through every pig lot in this county and beyond. And then, what will Dr. Alchemilla have to say about that I wonder? I doubt very much he'll even want to admit he ever knew you, much less allow your name to go up with his on the new hospital you two are building."  
  
Silence. Shock, then rage, became a palpable thing in the parlor that must be one of the private dining rooms on the lower deck of the Little Baroness.  
  
Suddenly, a strange scraping noise that Augusta realized, with surprise, was the sound of the man called Joshua grinding his teeth. He laughed suddenly, and it was a sound completely detached from anything sane, the sound of a mind snapping in two.  
  
Joshua bent down, and from the sound of it, grabbed a handful of the lace that adorned the fancy blouse Deanna had worn in the paintings. He stood and hoisted Deanna with him, until her feet in their high-buttoned shoes barely touched the floor. She gagged and gasped for air.  
  
"Kill you?" asked Joshua, "Why, that's a fine idea if I do say so myself. I hadn't even thought of it until you mentioned it. Perhaps you're right. You're not as frail-minded as you seem, my dear."  
  
She choked in his grasp in the air.  
  
"But Carl won't find any letter from you. And my family will not have to endure the shock of losing a daughter-in-law and a son in a single day. There are only fourteen people on this boat including myself and I will kill them one by one and then I will sink this little pleasure ship."  
  
"I will be the only survivor, and it will look like such a tragic accident. I will swim to shore and will be nearly catatonic from the loss of my entire family for probably a week or more. In fact, perhaps the only thing that will cheer me any at all will be finally seeing my name etched in stone alongside good Dr. Alchemilla's at the newest, most modern hospital in the state."  
  
"And whenever I'm working there, when the sun's shining on the water, in between the ailing I'll look out over the lake, and I'll think to myself: under that water sleeps a whore and her bastard child. And I'll hope you're both burning in hell."  
  
He dropped her, and Augusta heard and felt the jolt of Deanna's skull striking the plush arm of the velvet sofa. Deanna Blackwell slid to the floor, mewling in pain.  
  
"You'll die first. You and your bastard," growled Joshua, low and vicious.  
  
He left the room. Augusta heard his footsteps on the carpet patterned with vines, then heard a door open and close. She knew he had gone to find the axe – perhaps it was a fire axe used to smash open doors on a burning boat, or it could be used to slice through troublesome ropes should they tangle and pose a hazard in the engine room. An axe had an amazing number of uses.  
  
Soon, Joshua Blackwell returned, and the door opened then closed again. The axe must have been in a narrow wooden cabinet fastened to the wall near the staircase leading up to the dining saloon. Augusta had seen it when she boarded the boat at Rosewater Park – had seen the cabinet, but hadn't imagined what it contained. Now she knew.  
  
And she opened her eyes. She could move again, her arms and legs tingling faintly with the sensation of returning circulation, as though they had been asleep. She sat up and saw her shovel lying on the floor not far away to her left. To her right...  
  
...Was Deanna Blackwell, cowering on the floor, pressed against the sofa. Her innards spilled out, intestines and viscera coiled on the carpet. Her face was a black and purple mockery; swollen, bruised, and slightly misshapen with broken bones floating in the flesh beneath. Her nose was lopsided and crushed.  
  
Her clothing was shredded, where Joshua had torn it away to rip out what lay beneath her flesh and destroy the child growing within. Her body was scored with deep wounds where the axe had tunneled through her bones and muscles. Deanna bled copiously from every wound, from the gaping crater that had been her stomach, and from tiny cuts on her face where the skin had split and ripped apart under the force of Joshua's fists.  
  
One eye opened wide with panic, the other glued shut just as it had been in the painting.  
  
Deanna opened her mouth, now little more than a pucker in the swollen purple destruction of her face, and spoke.  
  
"Do something – he's gone mad!" she gasped, "He'll kill us both!" Her voice, even from the horror of her brutalized body, was undamaged and clear.  
  
Augusta felt her mouth opening and closing stupidly, no sound escaping. It seemed as though one sense at a time was returning. First sight and touch, enabling her to see and move. She could hear, of course, and suddenly she could smell and the odor of the destroyed woman was overpowering, a toxic fog of blood, shit, sweat, and a horrible scent like that of fresh, raw meat.  
  
Deanna clasped her hands over the shredded pit that had been her stomach and tried to scoot away from... what? Joshua? He must be in the room, but Augusta couldn't stop staring at the ruined woman.  
  
As she tried to crawl away from the sofa, back toward the wall, one of Deanna's old-fashioned shoes slipped on a slick bit of what had probably been her stomach wall, and shot out from under her.  
  
"Help me, please!" she screamed, "He's crazy! He says he won't allow me to have my child!"  
  
Augusta realized there was something large in the room, and finally tore her gaze away from Deanna to face Joshua.  
  
Her mind wanted to retreat, to slip away to a safe place.  
  
Joshua Blackwell had become the ghoul in scarlet. It was an immense creature that blocked the doorway behind it, vaguely human-shaped. Or perhaps merely shaped like a star, with a head and four appendages. It lacked definition, with bits of bone, skin, flesh, and clothing floating in red gore. They sank into the flowing red, then resurfaced, sank again and resurfaced.  
  
A face emerged, the face of Joshua Blackwell twisted into the hate she had seen in the paintings. Only, if the five-pointed shape was supposed to be a human form, the face had emerged from an arm. It quickly sank back in and reemerged elsewhere, in the midsection. Bones and flesh, skin and cloth emerged, sank, emerged, sank. There was a pocket watch, gold, on a gold chain. And there was a black bowtie. A leather shoe. Part of a ribcage. An unidentifiable shank of muscle. A hand.  
  
The ghoul in scarlet flowed across the floor, leaving a thick red trail on the carpet, obscuring its pattern. Absurdly, Augusta noticed that in amidst the leafy vines in the carpet pattern, there were small yellow flowers seemingly spaced at random. All in all, a beautiful design that matched the green and yellow velvet furniture exquisitely.  
  
The axe emerged from an appendage that logically should have been the left leg, then was sucked back in. It reemerged where the right arm should be, and the flowing blob of the arm reared back.  
  
SHOVEL! Augusta's mind screamed an order. Get the shovel. She threw herself to the floor and clutched at her shovel, concentrating her momentum in her bent legs to spring like a striking snake away from the ghoul in scarlet.  
  
The axe descended and buried itself in the velvet sofa, where Augusta had been sitting. The appendage rose away from it, leaving it behind. Joshua Blackwell's face emerged, saw the axe, and shrieked. The ghoul in scarlet fell upon the axe and absorbed it, lifted itself up and teetered backward. The sofa now sported a gash that vomited stuffing up between the green and yellow bands of the velvet upholstery.  
  
Crouching on the floor, Augusta stared, horrorstruck. Huddled against a wall near the sofa, the ruin that had been Deanna Blackwell screamed.  
  
Joshua Blackwell's face emerged, sank, reemerged, sank again, emerged, very quickly. Searching. It saw Augusta and grinned. The axe appeared where the head of the ghoul in scarlet should be. The creature bent backward, bonelessly, preparing to heave itself, and the axe, forward. Augusta leapt away and the creature bent forward, almost as though it were bowing to a lady at a fancy ball held long ago. The axe blade whistled through the air... and caught in the ceiling with a dull chopping sound.  
  
Joshua Blackwell's face surfaced, observed, and voiced its rage. The ghoul in scarlet flowed upward, engulfed the axe and pulled it free.  
  
A foot emerged. There was the pocket watch again, and the bow tie. Another shoe. Part of might have been an arm.  
  
The ghoul in scarlet had oozed halfway across the parlor floor toward the sofa, had turned back, and was moving back toward the door. Though Deanna continued to scream, the ghoul seemed uninterested, paying attention instead to Augusta.  
  
Fine, she thought. Fine, you goddamned son of a bitch. You've been torturing this poor woman even longer than Walter Sullivan did those children. Come and get me – this is obviously why I'm here.  
  
As she jumped to her feet and toward the door, she screamed, "Here I am, you motherfucker! Come on!" And she was out the door, and onto the lower deck of the Little Baroness.  
  
It was the starboard side, where the staircase led upward to the second deck and the dining saloon. This private cabin was the furthest toward the bow; its neighbor the left faced the port side. She ran a few steps and turned back to make sure the ghoul in scarlet had followed her. Her reward was a horrible sucking sound as the oozing mass of the ghoul squeezed through the door, in an amorphous blob that began to take its familiar shape and reached for her with the appendage that served as its left arm. A foot emerged, its toes pointed at her, before it sank back in.  
  
Joshua Blackwell's face, wearing an impossibly wide grin, popped out at the end of the left appendage and leered at her. She turned and bolted.  
  
As she ran, she noticed the Little Baroness still seemed to sail through the same soupy murk that had filled the streets of Silent Hill since Augusta had been pulled into this cool, wet hell. It could have been 1918, or 2004, or 1954, or any other time past or future. It was as though the riverboat had somehow sailed out of time.  
  
She reached the stairs to the upper deck. Behind her, freed from the confines of the private cabin, the ghoul in scarlet moved surprisingly, and alarmingly, fast. The axe had surfaced again, waving from the upper appendage, where the head should have been, while Joshua Blackwell's head peered from the right appendage, face grimly set as though performing a necessary, but unpleasant, chore. The same bits and pieces of his body and clothing emerged and sank and emerged again.  
  
Augusta took the stairs two at a time, and by the time she reached the top, the ghoul in scarlet quivered at the bottom. It flung itself forward and the axe cut deep into a wooden step halfway up. Joshua Blackwell's face frowned, and the ghoul oozed forward, absorbed the axe and pulled it free, then began to climb up. Augusta had paused and watched for just a moment, then sprinted away toward the safety of the dining saloon.  
  
She reached the doors, with their oval windows with their ornate wrought iron designs, and yanked them open, leapt inside and slammed them shut behind her. She turned, fumbling for a lock, but before she could find one a large dark shape rose up behind the frosted glass windows. She gaped at it, in the silence of the dining saloon.  
  
The shape outside slammed itself against the doors, which shuddered in their frames. A crack appeared in the window of the door to her right, and Augusta backed away. There was silence, then the brass knobs turned and the doors swung open. Joshua Blackwell's hands had surfaced, but having served their purpose, retreated into the ghoul in scarlet. Blackwell's face leered at her, turning slowly clockwise in its frame of red slime.  
  
Though the ghoul in scarlet tried to fling itself forward, Augusta saw the handle of the axe, and saw that the blade was caught on the doorframe outside. She raised her shovel and stabbed it forward, like a spear. The blade sank deep into the slime just beneath Joshua Blackwell's chin. She pushed it in, digging, then stabbed the shovel blade upward, wrenched the handle downward, and heaved and scooped out Blackwell's head. His face wore a shocked expression. With a grunt, she flung it across the room and heard it land on the piano keys, where it made a discordant sound like an exclamation.  
  
The ghoul quivered as if suddenly confused. It dropped away from the axe caught on the doorframe and fell forward. Augusta yelped and jumped away.  
  
It hit the polished parquet floor with a heavy, wet smack. Red slime began to spill away from the things – the bones, flesh, organs, and clothing – hidden inside. Bones emerged. Part of an arm, part of a leg. A lump of what could only be intestine. Something that looked like a liver. A sheet of skin, wadded and crumpled, that looked uncomfortably like the leather of Augusta's backpack. One hand, and then another. A foot, then a shoe, then a foot still inside a shoe.  
  
The pieces began to move, to quiver, then skitter randomly across the floor. Augusta squealed in disgust and ran to the nearest table and climbed onto it. The slime looked more like blood than ever and was running in rivulets across the floor. The thing that might be a liver had begun to roll ponderously, crossing square after square before encountering a rug, hesitating a moment, and rolling on, seeming to stick to the carpet as it moved on. A hand skittered past, like a crab, balanced on its fingertips, looking so ridiculous that Augusta barked a laugh that was almost a sob. Bones clattered across the polished wood, their ends wet with gristly cartilage.  
  
They were converging on the tiny dance floor, under the crystal cloud of the chandelier hanging overhead. Augusta heard Joshua Blackwell's head thump down from the piano, onto the piano bench, then onto the floor, and saw it roll crookedly across the stage before spilling down onto the dance floor. The face looked annoyed; its eyes found hers and stared at her with hatred.  
  
Augusta looked around the dining saloon, helplessly, and let out a sobbing scream.  
  
The birthday party aboard the Little Baroness had been interrupted and there were bodies, several of them, in the dining saloon. Seated at tables, sprawled on the floor, all of them scored with great gaping cuts. An old woman sat at a table, her head nearly severed and held on only by a strip of skin and flesh. A young man, probably a teenager, lay face down on the floor, his back hacked open. There were so many others... mutilated, chopped to death. Plates full of food had been smashed on the floor, sumptuous meals ground into the green and gold carpets and smeared on the parquet. On one table an enormous, many-tiered birthday cake sat without a single piece carved from it, its snowy icing spattered red. The body of a little girl wearing a frilly red and black checked dress lay on the floor, halfway under the table. It was hard to guess how old she might have been because her head had been chopped off.  
  
Joshua Blackwell had said there were only thirteen people aboard the ship and he would have no problem killing them all to protect his name, his standing, and his ambitions. And he had. Christ in heaven, he had.  
  
The pieces of Joshua Blackwell had collected beneath the chandelier on the dance floor and the slime that looked like blood had collected there as well. It rolled over the pieces and a stubby red column studded with bits of Joshua Blackwell was beginning to take shape. It was rebuilding itself. Soon it would sprout what served for arms, legs, and a head.  
  
Oh God, she breathed. What can I do?  
  
She hopped down from the table and charged the growing ghoul in scarlet. Joshua Blackwell's head rode the column as it climbed upward, wearing a smug smile. Gripping the shovel by the end of its handle, Augusta swung it back, then forward with a grunt. The shovel blade smacked into Blackwell's head and tore it free with a sound like a boot pulling from swampy mud. The growing column collapsed, the red slime spilling away from the pieces of Joshua Blackwell inside it.  
  
Maybe if she could find the heart and destroy it, she could kill the ghoul in scarlet, she thought. It could obviously survive without the head.  
  
Or maybe if she had a flamethrower. Or a cannon.  
  
Or a grenade launcher, she thought. This is good: think of something. Think of what it would nice to have right about now. Think about weapons and armies and the National Guard. Think about something or else your sanity will crack like an egg.  
  
An atom bomb. She searched through the pieces of Joshua Blackwell thrashing about on the floor at her feet. She stabbed the shovel downward and sliced the thing that might have been a liver in two.  
  
A machine gun. Joshua Blackwell's head was rolling toward her, growling and gnashing its teeth. She steadied herself, waited a moment, and swung the shovel. Back home in Asheville, various golf courses sometimes offered free passes to the employees at the visitors center in hopes of future recommendations to interested tourists, which was how Augusta had found herself experiencing the course at the Grove Park Inn Resort and Spa, the massive hotel perched atop Sunset Mountain overlooking downtown, one crisp morning last December. Though she learned she didn't especially enjoy golf, she seemed to have an affinity for it. Joshua Blackwell's head sailed up, arced over several tables, then down, and hit the floor with a heavy thud halfway across the dining room.  
  
A microwave oven. Shove the bastard's head in and cook it until it exploded like a potato. Where was the heart? There was part of the ribcage, almost half of it, except for one or two of the bottom ribs, but there was nothing inside. There was only chalk-white bone and grayish cartilage.  
  
A can of kerosene and a lighter. She kicked away a foot. Where was the goddamn heart? There was something, but too small to be a heart. Maybe a kidney. She stepped on it and it squelched horribly under her shoe. Augusta's skin crawled and she shivered. She didn't know how much more of this she could endure.  
  
A tank with the biggest, heaviest treads ever manufactured. There. It emerged from a tangle of intestines, trailing veins and arteries like the train of a wedding gown. She pounced and stabbed the shovel blade downward, slicing through the coils of intestine, then through the heart. A geyser of dark blood jetted out... and nothing happened.  
  
"Damn it!" Augusta wailed. Hands, feet – including one wearing an expensive leather shoe, bones, muscle, things she didn't want to think about, still writhed across the parquet floor, splashing through red slime that looked like blood.  
  
So, what now? She could spend the rest of the day swatting Joshua Blackwell's head away to prevent the ghoul in scarlet from reforming itself, but there seemed to be no way to kill it.  
  
She thought of the Blue Lady who had thrown her into this situation, like Alice through the looking glass.  
  
"What am I supposed to do?" she called out. "You put me here to do this, so what do you want me to do? I don't know how to kill it!"  
  
There was no answer, only the wet slapping and clicking of unspeakable things moving by themselves across the parquet floor. Augusta cursed. If she couldn't kill it, perhaps at least she could prevent it from taking form again. She would have to find the head and seal it away somewhere.  
  
So where had it gone? She looked over the dining saloon. There were so many bodies... Joshua Blackwell had murdered his entire family.  
  
Stop it. Find the head. Do something with it. Throw it overboard, or seal it in a refrigerator, or put it in the oven in the kitchen downstairs. Even if it won't die at least it will stay in pieces, and if it stays in pieces, it's relatively harmless.  
  
She paused, then smiled. Yes. Put it in the oven. And turn it on. That sounded like a fine idea.  
  
"Come on," she growled, "Come on, you gruesome sack of shit. Come out and let me play with you."  
  
A thrashing rope of intestine flopped against her right foot. She looked down at it, grimaced, and kicked it away.  
  
When she looked up she saw movement across the dining room. Joshua Blackwell's head rolled out from beneath the chair where the old woman with the nearly-severed head sat.  
  
Oh God, Augusta swallowed. She stumbled over the pieces of Joshua Blackwell moving on the floor, and when she was finally free of them she ran with long strides toward the head weaving drunkenly toward her across the floor. She saw more bodies lying between the tables – a man who looked to be in his thirties, his throat a deep red gully, an expression of shocked horror on his face. A woman in a dark red dress stained darker from axe blows to her stomach.  
  
Joshua Blackwell's head righted itself and faced her. It seemed to have chewed through its tongue; its mouth frothed with bloody foam as it gnashed and gnashed and gnashed its teeth.  
  
"Come on, Dr. Blackwell." Augusta stepped forward, and the head tilted back and rolled away.  
  
It knows what I'm trying to do, she thought, and shuddered. Several running steps took her to Joshua Blackwell's head, which was trying to hide itself under a table. She nudged it into the open with her shovel, then kicked it, hard. It – dear God – bounced across the floor, rising and falling, skipping, and rolling on. Augusta ran to catch up to it, kicked it again, and watched it rebound off the wall under the three oil paintings at the far end of the dining room. She was almost to the kitchen; the staircase that led downward was to her right.  
  
Joshua Blackell's head growled as she herded it around the banister with the blade of her shovel, then swept it down the stairs and watched it tumble to the bottom. Again, it bounced. She would never erase that image from her memory.  
  
Augusta slumped, a hand on the newel post at the top of the stairs. She suddenly felt sick, and she swallowed several times and took deep breaths to chase away the nausea. Her skin prickled. She looked up, gasping, at the paintings.  
  
Two of the paintings now depicted the Blue Lady. Augusta stared, agape. In the painting farthest left, the Blue Lady, resplendent in her gown, stared disconsolantly from the gilt frame, her eyes seeming to hold a world of sorrow. She was chained to a golden throne, the chains made of huge, blackened iron links flecked with rust. The throne sat on a tiny spit of rock jutting up from a heaving sea. Weeping Mary, clad in a blood-red bikini and sunglasses, stood by the throne, an arm draped over the Blue Lady's shoulders, a self-satisfied smirk on her face.  
  
Augusta blinked.  
  
The central painting seemed almost abstract. It showed nothing more than a bizarre design that looked as though it had been burned onto a blank canvas. There were circles within circles, strange symbols, marks, and letters, and in the center, a large triangle. It looked sinister but as Augusta gazed at it, she felt awash in peace and calm as if it were the symbol of something profoundly holy.  
  
She wanted to touch it, but somehow felt she shouldn't.  
  
In the painting on the right, the Blue Lady had burst her chains and hovered triumphant in the air. From her back, a pair of magnificent wings projected out and curved upward, almost filling the painting. Above her, the clouds had broken and beneath her the sea was calm. Weeping Mary, still in her bathing suit, had become a grotesque, wasted thing sprawled on the rock. Her sunglasses were missing and blood erupted from her eye sockets. Her tongue was long and forked and curled outward through a nest of fangs in a hiss at the angel above her.  
  
The wings were sheathed in peacock feathers, splendid in iridescent greens and blues.  
  
Augusta felt her breath hitch and looked away. At the foot of the stairs, Joshua Blackwell's head snarled and snapped, rolling back and forth. Augusta glanced at the paintings again, savoring the peace the strange image in the center seemed to bestow from its gilt frame. She couldn't imagine what it might be, but it seemed full of power and purity, and strength.  
  
Joshua Blackwell's head was a stupid, impotent thing at the bottom of the staircase. She looked down at it, her face set in a scowl. Keep it away from the rest of the pieces the ghoul in scarlet had contained and it was helpless. She would seal it in a pot on the stove, shove it into an oven, or kick it into a freezer. She started down the stairs to the kitchen.  
  
On the lower deck was a large plainly carpeted room with a large closet to one side filled with clean white waiters' jackets hung on hooks. Two were missing. Ahead was a swinging wooden door and beyond, presumably, the kitchens or galleys or whatever they would be called. Augusta shoved Joshua Blackwell's head forward with her shovel, toward the door. She stepped down onto the carpet, marched forward and pushed open the door and kicked the head inside. It had begun to squeal high-pitched.  
  
Augusta gritted her teeth. Beyond the door, the kitchens of the Little Baroness were cavernous and filled with appliances so antique they hardly looked like what they were and instead seemed almost like works of art. The room was searing hot, which meant the ovens and stoves were good and ready. She smiled and swept Joshua Blackwell's head along with her shovel.  
  
The ovens seemed to burn coal; in the corner to her left, a surprisingly shiny shovel hung from a hook on the wall above a metal bin heaping with dully gleaming black lumps. A long, fancy range topped with at least twenty burners ran along the left wall of the galley, while a broad, marble- topped counter unfurled itself down the center, and sinks the size of bathtubs clustered along the wall to the right. At the rear were several doors, some of them broad slabs that probably opened onto refrigerators and freezers. Shelves held tins of spices and ranks of closed cabinets almost certainly were stocked with dishes.  
  
Oven or freezer? She wondered if Joshua Blackwell's body parts could organize themselves enough to open a freezer without the head, and with that realized that if she lived long enough to look back on this experience, she would have nightmares for the rest of her life.  
  
She shook her head, and decided the oven would probably be the best choice. If she could incinerate Joshua Blackwell's head, the rest of him, she hoped, would be as good as dead and would flop and thrash like beached fish on the floor of the dining saloon until they rotted, or mummified.  
  
Joshua Blackwell's head alternated between mewling fearfully and growling and trying to snap at her as she brushed it along.  
  
"You'd better be afraid," she said to it and in response it looked up at her, snarled, and spat a gob of something noxious that missed and splattered instead on the floor behind her.  
  
She stomped hard on the head and pinned it to the floor while she grabbed a towel from the counter and used it to open the nearest oven. She grinned as a wave of heat billowed out. Then, using her shovel, she scooped up the head, tossed it inside and slammed the oven door.  
  
"There, you son of a bitch. I hope that hurts." She leaned on her shovel and stared at the oven door. From behind it, she heard muffled shrieks and a very satisfying rattle as Joshua Blackwell's head thrashed and fought to escape.  
  
A sudden flare of vertigo. She staggered and reached back to steady herself on the counter. From the corner of her eye she saw a pair of legs clad in black trousers at the end of the counter near the freezers, and a puddle of blood collected in the grout between the galley floor tiles. The rest of the body, probably that of the chef, was hidden from view. Of course Joshua Blackwell would have killed the chef, she thought, and felt ill. And the waiters as well. She looked back at the oven.  
  
It was a marvel of black wrought iron and white enamel, balanced on bandy little legs and adorned with iron curlicues and engravings – more like a work of art than a stove, she thought again. Gleaming copper pots of all sizes simmered on the stovetop.  
  
She watched the oven for what seemed like several minutes before she realized something was happening. The iron around the oven door was beginning to glow red. The banging behind it had intensified and the cries grew louder. The copper pots were boiling over, belching steam, water and sauces splashing out and sizzling on the range top. Augusta backed away, toward the door, dragging her shovel on the tiles. As though a bonfire was raging in its center, the kitchen was growing hotter. And hotter. Quickly.  
  
Something had begun to take shape on the enameled oven door. A shape, and shapes within, scorching themselves black against the white. After a moment, she recognized it as the design from the middle painting upstairs in the dining saloon. A circle within a circle ringing a triangle, dotted with arcane symbols and letters from some dead alphabet.  
  
She thought it best to flee and turned, threw open the kitchen door, and ran.  
  
She found that pieces of Joshua Blackwell were spilling down the stairs, seeking out the kitchen and she fought her way through them, stepping over and around them, and kicking them out of her way.  
  
"Oh God," she panted, "Oh God, oh God, oh God..."  
  
She was halfway across the dining saloon before the galley of the Little Baroness exploded. 


	19. The garden cemetery

At the rear of the dining room, where the staircase led down, a spume of flame erupted, spitting cinders. The Little Baroness shuddered violently and Augusta lost her footing, tumbling to the floor with a gasp. Around her tables tilted and fell; china, crystal, and silver hurtled through the air, shattering on the parquet, thudding on the carpets. Above, the crystal pendants and beads in the chandelier and every light fixture sang out as they chimed against one another. The massive birthday cake on its platter slid to the edge of its table, tilted like a falling tree, then cascaded ponderously to the floor.

Augusta lay on one of the lovely green and gold rugs, dazed but vaguely aware she could no longer feel or hear the Little Baroness' engines. It meant one of two things; either the boat had been split in half by the explosion and was soon to sink, or else the explosion in the kitchen had damaged the nearby engine room enough to stall the engines. Which meant the boat had probably been damaged badly enough to sink it.

Reeling, she climbed to her feet and picked up her shovel, looking over the dining room. From its orderly elegance before it had been shaken into a maze of overturned tables and chairs where broken glass and china crunched underfoot and the crystal chandelier swung wildly overhead, painting the room with sliding shadows.

The bodies of Joshua Blackwell's family were still strewn about the dining saloon, she realized and swayed on her feet. There's no one to mourn them, and as if it agreed, the Little Baroness voiced a sorrowful groan of bending timbers.

Augusta looked at the floor, blinking. Was it her imagination or had the floor begun to tilt ever so slightly downward, back to the stern? She turned to search for a path to the door, and rebounded off a table fallen on its side. She rolled it aside and stepped forward. Forks and spoons on the floor bent under her weight, graceful and delicate silverware ruined as she stepped on it.

She looked to her left and saw, beyond the windows and their green velvet drapes, shapes slipping very quickly by in the fog. The Little Baroness must be gliding along the shore, but she couldn't tell where it might be along the Toluca lakefront. Although... she thought the shapes might be trees, at intervals as though planted in a row.

Which would mean Jesperson Park, stretching along the downtown Silent Hill lakefront. Like Rosewater Park in South Vale, Jesperson Park's main feature was a long brick promenade walling off the park's lawns and flowerbeds from Toluca Lake. Trees grew in planting squares along the promenade, where they had shaded strollers and lovers, and dropped their leaves in the water every autumn.

Further on, halfway along the downtown lakeside, a wide brick pier jutted out from the promenade into the water like a fat, blocky peninsula. All along the promenade and pier there were benches and at regular intervals atop brick columns, giant Victorian cast-iron planters shaped vaguely like elaborate trophies and overflowing with flowers. On the pier itself stood the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Bell. It was huge, copper, and weighed more than a ton. Once used to alert the town to trouble, such as fires, rising waters, or accidents at the small coal mines that had once tunneled through the hills surrounding Silent Hill, it had been renamed and rung one hundred times on the anniversary of Lincoln's assassination every year since 1865. Once it had hung in the town square in the shadow of Silent Hill City Hall, but had been moved to the park upon the promenade's completion in 1899.

Moved to the broad brick pier. Augusta felt herself go perfectly still. If the Little Baroness was racing through the water this close to the Jesperson Park promenade, it would soon slam into the pier where the Lincoln Memorial Bell hung.

"Oh crap," she whispered.

How soon would the boat collide? The pier was located halfway along the waterfront, with a long, shallow slope between the promenade and the streets and buildings of downtown Silent Hill. At the top of the hill, up from the pier and promenade there were five blocks to the west and five to the east. If the Little Baroness had sped by this much of the promenade already, how much more was left? How many more blocks?

How many more seconds? Augusta was shouldering her way through the upended tables. The dining saloon had only one exit, the double doors with their oval windows. What would happen if she couldn't get through the doors and around the upper deck to the other side of the ship to leap off before it collided?

Maybe the collision wouldn't damage the ship very badly. Then again, the Little Baroness was old and made of wood, and ramming into the Jesperson Park promenade might grind it to splinters. And it wasn't her imagination: the floor had developed a definite slope. The Little Baroness was sinking.

And how the hell would she get off the boat anyway? Jump from the equivalent of a two-story building onto the bricks? What if she jumped and caught her foot in one of the planters? She would probably lose her balance, fall back, and crack her skull on some part of the Little Baroness as it glided by – or wedge herself between the promenade and the ship and be ground into so much raw meat as it moved on without her.

Why was she heading toward the doors? There were plenty of windows to her left and all she need do was smash one open for a way out.

The Little Baroness, she discovered, was much closer to the promenade than she had thought – it slammed suddenly into the promenade, crunched and ground its way along the bricks, and rebounded, throwing everything aboard to the left, then to the right. Augusta struggled to stay on her feet and watched tables roll past. How in hell was the boat moving so quickly? The damn thing was sinking, and sinking fast, for God's sake.

She cut a path toward the windows, shoving tables aside and kicking chairs away. Her feet tangled in a wadded lace tablecloth on the floor and she nearly fell. Trees were still slipping by outside the windows. She stepped over a body, that of the old woman whose head had finally pulled free of its tendril of skin and rolled away to God knew where. Any second now the boat would hit the pier and the floors and decks would peel back on themselves in a fury of flying chunks of wood and metal.

Any second now. Broken glass crunched on the floor. Was she running? She thought so and heaved a table aside. Only a few more feet to the window. The floor was tilting more sharply now and everything in the dining room was beginning to slide back toward the kitchen – the piano slid off the stage, playing an ominous chord as it dropped down a step the floor.

She stepped over an overturned chair and smashed a window with her shovel. The window exploded outward, and the shovel blade rode in a cloud of shards into the air outside. She didn't have time to brush aside the jagged chunks of glass before climbing through and felt the ragged window frame pick at her jeans as she scrambled through.

Outside the deck was slippery with moisture from the fog and she nearly lost her footing again, spinning as she fought to keep her balance to see bits of glass sliding away toward the stern. The Little Baroness, however, did not appear to be riding low in the water, and for that she was glad.

She looked forward to see the promenade pier probably no more than a block away in the mist, and turned and bolted toward the rear of the Little Baroness where she discovered the water had risen to what she guessed was halfway up the walls of the lower deck. The engine room had to be flooded, and the kitchen as well, and the water was probably spouting up through a hole blasted in the floor.

She wondered if the oven with Joshua Blackwell's head inside might have dropped through such a hole and sunk to the bottom of the lake.

As the boat's momentum carried it along, the water pulled at the dark green paddlewheel and spun it lazily as though the Little Baroness was adrift on the lake on a calm summer day. Augusta looked back toward the bow and the approaching pier; she braced herself against the railing and one of the support columns spaced evenly along the rail and painted the same forest green.

She waited.

When the Little Baroness collided with the pier, the impact was even stronger than Augusta had expected, and trying to hold onto the railing and pillar, she wondered if her arms would pop out of their sockets. The front of the boat disintegrated – the lower deck simply stopped as though it had hit a wall, with its cabins and compartments compressing against themselves, crumpling and exploding in bursts of wood and glass. The upper deck seemed to peel free of the lower deck, stretching forward as if to bridge the pier and splash down in the water on the other side, but slamming down to collide with the brick pavement. It tore the trees to shreds, demolishing benches and planters before finally falling to pieces and washing the pier in dust and broken boards. Broken bits of wood and twisted pieces of metal struck the Lincoln Memorial Bell and rang it again and again, as though playing a funeral dirge.

The boat shook furiously, like a toy in the hands of a malevolent child determined to smash it to bits against the floor. Augusta heard screaming, but momentarily realized she was only hearing herself.

The Little Baroness sank lower and lower as it disemboweled itself on the pier and water rushed in to fill it. Augusta looked toward the promenade and saw the black iron balustrade as it seemed to rise up to greet her. She threw her shovel – how had she held on to it, she marveled – and as soon as it seemed safe, jumped, landed and slipped on the wet bricks, fell and rolled onto her side to watch the ship die.

Still churning onward, the Little Baroness was nearly half gone, its bow chewed to pieces that were thrown up and then fell down, flailing at the air. It skipped in the water, jumped up over the edge of the pier, then rolled over like a sleeper in the throes of a terrible dream. It exposed its white belly, dripping and slick, then capsized, and finally it seemed its momentum was exhausting itself. It spun, upside down in the water and sinking quickly, and the paddlewheel slid past, nudged the destruction on the pier and dropped out of sight beneath the water.

A final ragged chunk of torn wood fell and struck the Lincoln Memorial Bell, playing a sad note as waves slapped against the promenade and pier. It was over.

And Augusta was just fine, she discovered, except for what would probably be one hell of a bruise on her hip where she had fallen on the bricks. She checked for broken bones and felt none, checked for cuts and scrapes and found none other than those Kitty had left across her knuckles. Not even a twisted ankle, and she wondered if she should dance an elated jig or break down and bawl.

If I get up and dance, she thought, I'd probably just fall down again, and I don't have time to cry. Have to be prepared for whatever might come next. Have to find my daughter.

She stood, bent and retrieved her shovel, then straightened and took a deep breath. Mist swirled around her and snowflakes still fell, and still melted as they hit the ground. She wondered what to do now, thought about it, then smiled. Have to be prepared for whatever might come next? She would be.

As Augusta walked up a broad staircase leading away from the promenade to the street at the top of the hill, she noticed that Jesperson Park was as overgrown as one would expect a park abandoned for five years to be. Was Rosewater Park this choked with weeds and wildflowers? She hadn't noticed. Along the way uphill, the staircase opened onto wide landings where trails led away to either side; the trails were nearly blocked by the bushes and trees that lined them.

Why were there so many flowers? At one landing, each corner was marked with a planter and benches. The planters spilled over with black-eyed daisies, huge bundles of colorful flowers drooping down onto every bench. Black-eyed daisies didn't bloom in North Carolina until the height of summer, almost certainly later in Illinois. The next landing was planted with a perimeter of rosebushes, all in bloom in blood reds, snowy whites, and delicate pinks, their scent lingering in the fog.

Roses in the South weren't in bloom until the beginning of June. Augusta saw sunflowers, heavy-headed under crowns of yellow petals. She saw daylilies in red, yellow, and orange. There was a bed of marigolds and an abstract tapestry of dahlias in every color. Dogwoods blazed in pink and white.

And still the snowflakes fell here and fell there and still they melted. It didn't make sense.

Neither does anything else here, though, she reasoned. She didn't know who the flowers might be for, but doubted they had bloomed for her. If a person was summoned to Silent Hill, they probably didn't deserve flowers, she thought, and she certainly hadn't done anything worth a bouquet.

She walked on. At the top of the stairs, she looked to her left, then to her right, to get her bearings. Straight ahead was the foot of grand Jackson Avenue, whose wide median planted with trees and flowering bushes divided downtown Silent Hill in two, and running east and west was King Street. A wide, tree-lined sidewalk led away in both directions along King Street, while across the street on either side of the intersection, antique brick buildings loomed in the mist, their windows like milky, blind eyes behind another colonnade of trees. Ruined awnings hung in shreds from their frames above a hundred show windows, and one window – she strained to read the store's sign through the mist and the screen of branches that partially obscured it – at an electronics store had been smashed, the merchandise behind it vanished. Someone, apparently, was taking advantage of Silent Hill's riches left behind.

It figures, she thought, but she had somewhere to go and began to walk along the sidewalk, the shovel over her shoulder.

Downtown Silent Hill had been a pleasant district labeled on official maps as "Central Silent Hill" and made up of more than fifty blocks of varying sizes peppered with parks and small squares. The largest churches in town made downtown their home, along with city government buildings, the largest city cemetery, the Public Art Gallery, which had been the city's small art museum, and the main branch of the town library, amid a fine collection of Victorian brick buildings housing an impressive selection of boutiques, nightspots, and restaurants.

Like South Vale, downtown had suffered through the lingering illness of urban renewal, and had lost some of its treasures to modernization, including an stately old textile factory building that had fallen to make way for the Silent Hill Town Center mall. But mostly, downtown looked, felt, and was old enough and ornate enough to steal tourists' hearts by the thousands. In the fog, however, it looked menacing and surly. The feeling of being watched returned, and Augusta wondered if perhaps Weeping Mary was preparing to make another appearance some time soon.

Augusta's destination, the main branch of the Silent Hill Public Library, lay east of Jackson Avenue on the side of downtown centered around the town square, Burke Square, where City Hall, the Robert Black Memorial Auditorium, and two huge churches waged a friendly face-off to determine who could look the most majestically imposing.

Or perhaps a giant sinkhole had swallowed up Burke Square and everything nearby, and maybe the library had fallen into the Illiniwak River. But, she thought, it was worth a try. If the monsters of Silent Hill's past were going to come crawling out of their slime after her the entire time she was here, she had to know who to expect next. She remembered scores of details from "An Unwanted County" but what if she had forgotten something important?

Maybe a serial killer had once haunted the streets of Silent Hill and would be coming for her next, no matter how long he had been dead. Or maybe someone in the past had slaughtered their family, who would cry out to be set free. She wanted to know, and to know, she would have to refresh her memory.

Something rose to mind – something else usually mentioned in the same breath as the Little Baroness, equally inexplicable, but all she could remember of it was the year it had happened. 1939. What was it?

Downtown was so deathly still it was unnerving. The only sounds were her shoes on the sidewalk and her breathing. She felt the same way she had in South Vale – that the city was dead around her, its buildings rotting. She knew the apartments she saw above the stores were still full of furniture, left undisturbed since their tenants fled to safety that September. Every store was still stocked but would never again be ready for business because everything inside had been decayed by five years of abandonment.

To her right, a brick wall rose and fell like waves drawn by a child, rising to points where lampposts stood useless and lightless in the dim daylight, before swooping downward again. Beyond the wall stood the trees of Jesperson Park, dripping and wet. To her left the buildings fronting King Street stepped aside to make way for Bishop Street, which ran parallel to Jackson Avenue, then shouldered up to King again.

They all looked alike – rotted awnings, bleary windows, dark bricks. Along their rooflines, most sported dormers or decorative peaks, and a few even had gargoyles, but they all looked dead. Augusta couldn't stop herself from imagining the apartments above every shop filled with rotting corpses, suddenly dropped dead in the middle of the day as they had gone about their business. Rotting on sofas in front of televisions. Rotting on toilets with their pants around their ankles. Rotting on kitchen floors with refrigerator doors thrown wide on snacks and produce and milk and tea and sodas decayed and spoiled away to black sludge. Rotting at dinner tables with meals before them reduced to dried crusts on plates.

A mother perhaps, rotting on the bathroom floor by a bathtub, the body of her toddler long since reduced to a soup of hair and bones stinking of death in what had once been the bathwater.

Stop it. Oh God, stop it, she commanded herself with a shiver. She couldn't stand to think of anything like that. And besides, she knew the buildings were empty. The trappings of lives were everywhere in Silent Hill, but the lives themselves had run away five years ago. The people who had lived here were still alive somewhere else, she told herself. They were probably scattered to the ends of the country and the earth, she thought, but they were still alive.

The next street down from Bishop was Wallace, and in the intersection of Wallace and King sat a car that looked as though it had slammed into a wall at full speed. Augusta looked at it from the sidewalk, then stepped into the street and approached, curious. She hadn't seen another wrecked car anywhere else in Silent Hill.

It was a Nissan, painted white and looked fairly new – perhaps a 1999 model. Which would make sense, she thought. Bits of glass, plastic, and metal littered the street and the front of the car was smashed in almost all the way up to the windshield, its crumpled hood hanging open like a scab peeled up from a wound. The windshield, though shattered, still hung from its frame largely intact, and was marred by two crystalline spider webs, one large and one small – both were stained dark near their centers.

Augusta stepped aside to peer through the driver's window. There was no one inside, though she saw tufts of hair caught in the splintered windshield. The darkness on the glass was blood, she saw, and the inside of the car was splashed with it.

In the passenger seat was a baby's car seat laying on its side as though it had been thrown forward then bounced back. From the smaller glass spider web hung enough hair to tell that the child, probably a toddler, who had sat in the car seat had been a curly blond. There was something else there as well, though, a wizened scrap of leather that might have been that child's scalp. The blood was long-dried, and there was no point in checking to see if either the child or its mother – probably its mother because there was an open pocketbook spewing its contents on the driver's side floorboard – had survived or might be nearby. If they were nearby, they were dead, and though she had already seen much worse, Augusta didn't want to see that. Seeing that nameless little girl missing her head aboard the Little Baroness, and seeing Billy and Miriam Locane brutalized and suffering fifty years after their deaths had been too much to bear. She stepped away from the car, feeling as though her heart had been swallowed up in a snowdrift.

Why had that been there, she wondered. A lump was forming in her throat, and she swallowed hard to force it away. Why had that been there – for what purpose other than her own heartsickness?

At Jones Street, next down from Wallace, a sinkhole had opened up just past the intersection. Trees lay toppled in Jesperson Park to the right, tangled and fallen to form a deadfall of branches and trunks. The brick wall along the sidewalk crumbled away into the pit, and a lamppost pointed at an odd angle toward the sky. Augusta followed the lip of the hole across King Street, listening to the sound of gurgling water deep within.

At the corner of Jones and King, buildings led away up the left side of Jones Street to Koontz Street, the next up from King. On the right there was only the open plain of Summerland Cemetery, which extended north two blocks from King Street, past Koontz to Sagan Street, and ran east along King Street two blocks to the Illiniwak River, where it turned north and followed the river to the first bridge connecting downtown to East Silent Hill.

The sinkhole at the intersection had eaten its way through Summerland's tall wrought iron fence, which was tipped with spikes and marked along its length by regularly spaced tall iron poles topped with brass globes. Two spiked lengths sagged downward as though straining to support one of the taller poles teetering over the hole, but hadn't given way and fallen in. The brass ball however, had fallen away and was gone. Past the fence and into the cemetery, the pit had consumed a handful of graves, including one whose headstone still stood erect. In the mist six feet down beneath the stone, barely visible, a coffin had spilled halfway out of its crumbled vault and hung in the air, looking as though the slightest movement of air or of a footfall on the ground above would send it crashing down.

Augusta turned away to walk up Jones Street, with the cemetery to her right and buildings glowering at her from across the street.

She passed trees planted every few yards along the street and signs that forbade parking, and it almost looked normal. Almost. As though she were out for a walk on a foggy spring day, in the quiet time before the tourists really began pouring into town. But the silence... the dead, unnatural silence.

Behind its fence, Summerland sprawled along beside Augusta as she walked past. It was the oldest and also the largest cemetery in Silent Hill and had been in use since before the town's founding, at least since 1812, when the area had been inhabited only by a few scattered farm families. It boasted the resting places of the first settlers of the town, in a crowded quadrant where the tombstones were packed so tightly it was impossible to tell where one grave ended and another began, as well as, further out, spacious burial plots that had been added as the cemetery grew into one of the magnificent "garden cemeteries" that became popular as the 19th Century wore on. Except for the oldest section of the cemetery, Summerland was almost a park, with flowerbeds and artistically places trees and groves, winding gravel carriage paths and trails studded with marble benches where strollers might rest and contemplate, and tombs, especially those in the wealthier family plots, that were openly competing to outdo each other in grandeur.

Soon, as the intersection of Koontz Street yawned in the wall of buildings to her left, the grand front gates of Summerland Cemetery opened on her right. She paused and looked in. Rather than walking up to Sagan Street and turning there to get to the library, the cemetery might make a nice shortcut, and would be a handy route if Sagan had opened up in pitfalls. Then again, it didn't seem wise to brave a cemetery in Silent Hill. Not now. Not anymore.

She turned away to walk on, thinking that God only knew what might be crawling loose in the cemetery. The words of the man who had lain on the sofa in the Ridgeview Clinic echoed in her mind: there were things that didn't exist in Silent Hill now. She had seen some of them, and didn't want to see what among them might make itself a home in a cemetery.

But as she passed the gates there came the sounds of a far off struggle, and a tiny voice cried in the mist. A scream from far way, reduced to a whisper by distance and fog that swallowed sound. But still she heard it and in an instant her heart was in her throat.

"Mama – Mama, help me!"


	20. The furious sound

Her shoes crunching on the crushed gravel as she sprinted along Summerland Cemetery's broad central pathway. The shovel heavy on her shoulder, a weight she wanted to throw aside if it would help her to run even a tiny bit faster – she knew she couldn't because the shovel was too valuable, and Silent Hill was too dangerous. Her backpack a slowing weight heavy like a stone bouncing on its straps. The knotted sweatshirt tangling around her legs. Mist drifting between the tombstones in their orderly rows. Trees, old and gnarled, planted along the gravel road, grown upward to meet high overhead in a Gothic arch.

And the sound, far off and lost somewhere in the fog, of a child fighting to get free of whoever was hurting her. The sounds of a struggle, the sobbing scream of a little girl who knew something bad was happening to her and who knew something worse would come if she couldn't run away.

Augusta would have taught her daughter to stay away from strangers, but knew that strangers were persuasive. No matter how well you taught your children, they could often be tricked. So Augusta would also have made sure her daughter knew, if somehow she found herself threatened by a stranger, she should fight, struggle, scream, make as much noise as she possibly could and draw as much attention to herself as possible, and get help from the nearest person wearing a name tag or a uniform.

There was so much she would have taught Mary-Elizabeth, if only she had let her live.  
What if this was a second chance, and what if this second chance was being taken away? Weeping Mary had said Augusta could have her daughter back if only she suffered enough. And what hurt more than having a second chance ripped apart before her eyes? She thought of the impossibility of a dead child alive and well in a dead town and reminded herself again that nothing mattered except...

Someone was hurting her child, as she thought of the despair she had lived with for five years.

Someone was hurting her child, as she thought about tumbling back down into that familiar black hopelessness if this second chance was taken from her.

Someone was hurting her child, which meant she was not important. What she thought was not important. Nothing she had ever thought, done, felt, hidden, exposed, wept over, laughed over, or prayed about in her life was as important as stopping whomever was hurting her child.

So she ran, feet pounding on the gravel, forcing herself forward as the need for oxygen began a slow burn in her lungs.

She panted, and screamed out hoarse, "Don't hurt her, please! Take me – I'll suffer. Hurt me, please, do whatever you want, just stop hurting her! Don't make her suffer for what I did, please!"

The mist swallowed her voice and whatever was hurting her child ignored her. The sounds of Kitty fighting and screaming in pain went on, and Augusta burst into tears that were equally agony, frustration, and rage. She tripped as the world blurred around her, and nearly fell, then she forced herself forward. A second was too precious to waste.

"I'm coming, baby, "she gasped, "I'm coming, I'm coming..." From the distance came a furious sound, and Augusta stumbled in surprise. Kitty gave a final pained squeal and fell silent, and instantly Augusta thought the worst. Black spots began to dance across her vision, as she reeled and whispered, "No..." before her legs buckled. She pitched forward to land hard on the gravel.

Immediately she sat up, and felt as though encased in ice, head swimming. Her daughter was silent – and it was a terrible silence.

Maybe she had gotten away and was running to safety. Maybe someone had some to her rescue... but if so, Augusta would hear the sounds of a frightened child in need of comfort and reassurances that everything was all better now – sounds that were so much better than those of a child in pain. If Kitty was all right, surely Augusta would hear her daughter crying and calling for her.

So, maybe she was dead. A spear of terrified dread lanced through her, cold as winter, and she put her hands to her heart.

Oh, God, no. Please no. I'm so sorry I gave her up once, please I beg of You, don't take her away from me now.

The ground began to shake, and she froze. Kneeling, she felt the vibrations rolling up out of the earth, up through her knees and thighs, and felt the tiny bits of gravel in the path shifting beneath her. On the ground where her shovel had fallen, gravel rattled against the steel blade.

The furious sound came again, and she recognized it as a howl of rage from a deep-voiced man. High above, the tree branches slapped together, breaking off twigs that rained down around her.

She snatched up her shovel, climbed to her feet and stood, and clutched it tight, and screamed out her daughter's name.

Maybe she was just hurt, or maybe she had gotten away, she can't be dead, not again, please God not again, don't take her away from me because I'm so, so very sorry I gave her up once before.

What was the furious sound? What man was screaming, more anger in his voice than she had ever heard in any other voice before?

The ground pitched once, then the gentle rumbling resumed.

And very close by in the path ahead, something large erupted from the ground. It rose up, gravel falling away in a shower, throwing off rocks and clods of soil. Augusta recognized it as the fence that ringed Summerland Cemetery.

Black wrought iron tipped with fancy spearheads, ten-foot spans of spiked tines interrupted by tall iron poles, each crowned with a brass ball. It blocked the path, and in her surprise, Augusta screamed and stumbled backward. She turned as the rumbling continued and she saw another length of fence ripping its way out of the earth. To her left and to her right, shapes moving in the mist were more lengths of fence, and more iron poles topped with brass balls rising higher and higher up out of the graveyard soil. The fence along the perimeter of Summerland Cemetery was only seven feet high, but this fence, these new lengths rose further, ten feet, then taller, fifteen feet and kept climbing, twenty feet high and stopped, the spikes and every brass ball draped in cauls of dirt and grass.

Open-mouthed, wide-eyed and stunned, Augusta stood close enough to lay her hand against the fence, and found it cold and damp. Beads of moisture rolled down the metal. She turned away – this was not a cage, but a corridor. The ground had stilled.

There was only silence. She cried out her daughter's name again, "MARY-ELIZABETH! KITTY! Baby, where are you!" and heard nothing.

"Oh, God," she wailed and stabbed the shovel blade into the ground at her feet, hating the helplessness she felt. What could she do now?

She could walk away, and search and try to find whatever she could. Through the mist it was hard to tell, but she thought the sounds of Kitty's struggle had come from somewhere far ahead and to her left. She would go and try to find her daughter, and help her if she could.

The furious sound came again, a man's scream of hatred and anger, but the fog smothered the sound and there was no echo.

Augusta quickly discovered that Summerland Cemetery had become a giant maze, its twisting corridors marked off by the fence. It did no good to run because the new paths turned, and turned back on themselves, led in circles, and were blocked by gravestones everywhere she turned. She wandered, looking from side to side, hoping to catch a glimpse of movement, hoping she would see her daughter on the other side of the fence or better yet, in the path straight ahead just a few steps away. Every few steps, she screamed for Kitty. There was never a response.

Frequently, it was obvious that as the fence had shot up through the ground, it had carved its way through the vaults and coffins that lay beneath. Broken bones littered the ground, and shreds of cloth were caught on the fence – bits of the fine suits and dresses in which the dead of Silent Hill had been laid to rest. Thankfully rare, there were also gobbets of liquefying flesh oozing down the black iron bars, and at one spot there was what could only be a long, blonde wig blackened with mud and hanging limply.

In the distance, the furious sound wailed like a siren. The man's scream rose and reached a plateau that seemed to vibrate through the core of every bone in Augusta's body. As the scream split the air the ground quivered as if in fear. With every far off roar Augusta tensed, her muscles tightening, bracing herself and waiting for something from a nightmare to leap down on her out of the mist. With every scream she squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip to fight away the panic that threatened to well up, and then overflow inside her and drive her to throw herself at the fence and claw and tear at the bars until her fingers were bloody stumps. She had to keep going. Kitty might need her.

Over and over, Augusta screamed for her daughter and with every resounding silence that answered her, in the pit of her stomach a feeling of uselessness came to life, grew, and thrashed about like a writhing worm. If her daughter was still alive – and she had to be, she had to be, oh God, please – Augusta couldn't help her, wandering and lost as she was.

If she was still alive, she might be lying on the ground, her tiny life spilling out on the ground even now, bright red on the cemetery grass.

She clambered over a large tombstone blocking the way. Tilting to the right, it was made of creamy marble, gray streaked with white, and was topped with a blocky cross. Fat clouds of moss scudded across its face. The next grave behind had a tiny marker, white marble with the carved figurine of a lamb perched atop it. The lamb and tombstone were spotted with black lichen, and Augusta knew it was the grave of a child. She bent down to read the inscription:

Dora Anne Bachman

Born – May 11, 1897

Died – August 12, 1902

Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me

She ran her fingertips across the carved words and thought, this child was five years old. She stood and looked into the mist ahead, a look of desperation on her face. Snowflakes still fell gently and melted on the ground. She felt so weak. Helpless, as if there was nothing she could do but search in vain and run in circles while someone hurt her daughter, or while her daughter lay dying.

Or maybe they had already killed her. Any maybe they would again and again, while she watched or listened and could do nothing to stop it. This must be what hell was like. Maybe it was hell, she thought. Hell is repetition.

Or maybe Kitty was alright, she told herself again, wanting a spark of hope. Maybe she had escaped and run away to safety.

Or maybe, if only she kept suffering, Kitty would be alright. Maybe if she suffered enough, Kitty would be set free – and Augusta would suffer until she died, and do it gladly, if there was a chance Kitty could go free. Anymore, it seemed Silent Hill had fallen out of the world outside, the world where tourists still poured in by the carload to see the joys and wonders of Toluca County, where taxes were paid to Springfield and Washington, and where she could drive east in her little red truck and eventually reach that city she now loved that was perched up in the clouds and forests of Western North Carolina.

If only she knew the rules of this new world. Could she trust a bleeding monster to keep her word? Where was her daughter and what had happened to her? Her child had died, and lived again – could she die again? Would she live again? Could she die and live and die and live, over and over?

Augusta thought of the serpent that devoured its tail, a symbol of infinity. There was a word for it, a name, but she couldn't remember what it was.

She walked on and screamed for her child again. As if to answer, the furious sound came as it had so many times before. Beneath her feet the cemetery trembled, as though the thing that screamed its rage was pounding its fists on the ground. How many fists could it have to cause the earth to shake, she wondered, then thought of the arms that had pulled her into Silent Hill.

She began to pray, and tried to run again, no matter the gravestones in her path and the twists and turns of the fence. As a reward for her troubles, she barked her shin against a nearby stone and pain sizzled up her leg. She howled her daughter's name and hobbled on.

Please God, if she's alive, keep her safe. Please, this I beg of You. Don't let her be dead. Not again. Please.

Keep her safe.

Clumps of dirt and grass stuck on the fence, which blocked her path at every turn.

Keep her safe.

There were bones on the ground, broken and splintered, and stained brown with dirt and age. This was one of the older parts of the cemetery, with only a few fresher graves scattered among the dead who had rested here since the late 1800's and early 1900's.

Keep her safe. Please. I'll never ask You for anything else ever again, if only You'll keep her safe and give me this second chance. Please don't let anything hurt her.

She heard the furious sound once more – and it was cut short.

There was another sound now, a whispering, a crackling, a sound like handfuls of grass being pulled from the ground. Startled, she looked to the fence, and saw vines clambering skyward along the iron bars.

Leaves opened, glossy green, as she watched. There were buds, which opened into trumpet-shaped flowers in purple, blue, and white, riding upward as the vines curled around and around and around the bars of the fence. The vines cloaked the fence, and tangled on one another and wove a green cloth as they wrapped around themselves in a frenzy to grow. At the top of the fence, the vines seemed surprised at having nothing more to climb and shot into the air, then drooped downward. They thrashed in the air, still growing, fresh with shiny leaves and velvet blossoms.

Morning glory vines.

A flash of color caught Augusta's eye and she looked down to see a golden carpet of dandelions sprouting at her feet. Shocked, she gasped and for a moment, forgot to draw another breath, staring dumbfounded as the world around her turned in an instant bright yellow, green, and white, purple, and blue.

Something was happening, and she didn't know what, but it seemed there was suddenly nothing to be afraid of. She began to run again, dodging gravestones, her shin throbbing. She stumbled on a footstone and fell against the fence, and discovered the morning glory vines were warm, as though the leaves and flowers had been touched by the sunrise of a bright summer morning. She wondered for a moment when morning glories bloomed. Spring or summer, and when would they bloom in North Carolina? When would they bloom in Illinois? She couldn't recall.

Her run was soon slowed again to a walk, as tombstones loomed suddenly out of the mist, or rose just high enough to trip her and send her tumbling to the ground. The corridors formed by the fence still wound in drunken, random Greek twists.

The tombs had changed from the more modest monuments of the middle class to more and more ostentatious statements in marble and granite. Simple crosses and carved slabs gave way to stone angels with moss in the marble curls of their hair, draped in dramatic mourning over carved scrolls spread wide bearing the names of the deceased. Tombs like miniature fairytale castles appeared. There were more statues, including one tall black marble pedestal with a severe bronze bust of the deceased peering sternly out on the world. More trees began to appear, and Augusta recalled that the wealthier sectors of the cemetery had always been the shadiest.

All the while in the distance, though seemingly nearer and nearer as she navigated the maze, was the furious sound. It seemed to be growing weaker though, as though something was crushing the life out of it, and now rather than furious, it had become almost fearful. Less a scream of rage and more a call for help.

The maze cut through a grove of trees where the fence had sliced open many of the tree trunks as it had erupted. In the center of the grove was a statue of an angel standing atop a pedestal, an arm outstretched as though offering its hand, smiling serenely. There were benches nearby, where one could rest and look at the statue – the fence had shot up beneath one of the benches and split it in half. The pieces lay on the ground.

Augusta walked on and the people buried beneath her feet were no longer merely wealthy, but extremely wealthy. There were tombs draped with ivy, with statues of angels standing guard by bronze grille doors. There were tombs with stained glass windows.  
There were family plots enclosed by fences of their own, some of which had been ripped up when the cemetery fence split the ground, and had been hoisted high into the air and now dangled from the spikes and the poles with their brass globes, wrapped tightly now in a heavy green shawl of morning glory vines.

A statue of an angel stood atop a grave, holding a marble sheaf of wheat in one arm and pointing heavenward with her other hand.

Gravel paths wound in and out of the corridors formed by the vine-covered fence. There was a tomb guarded by twin marble sphinxes, and another like a tiny Gothic chapel, with an angel peering out from a mantle of ivy atop the roof. The snowflakes fell and mist breathed through the air. The furious sound had died away, though there was something not very far away like a whimper.

Soon, even that was gone.

Now, the tombs and monuments were by far the grandest in the cemetery, so fabulously crafted and majestic that tourists had come to marvel and snap pictures – just one of the many things there had once been to see and do in Silent Hill. As they were everywhere else throughout Summerland Cemetery, every stone was pocked with lichen, or soft with moss, or curtained with ivy. As they were elsewhere through Summerland Cemetery, the trees were fat and tall, many with tombstones at their bases leaning crookedly, shoved aside by their roots.

Then the maze opened up on the grandest tomb in the cemetery, and it was one Augusta had never seen before. This was the largest open space she had seen in the cemetery since the fence had ripped through the ground, and it was filled by a magnificent house for the dead that looked like a small Greek temple.

It was made entirely of black marble, glistening slick with moisture in the fog. At the head of a short flight of stairs was a broad porch behind a colonnade of black pillars, and beyond the porch was a massive set of bronze double doors. Augusta counted them – a procession of seven life-size bronze statues marched up the stairs to the doors, mourning Greek goddesses trailing garlands of bronze flowers, and at each corner of the roof knelt a bronze angel, wings folded tightly in reverence. At the peak of the roof atop a tiny cupola stood another angel, wings unfurled in triumph, a giant bronze cross in the crook of an arm.

It was big enough to be a church, Augusta thought. From where she stood she could see a row of large stained glass windows leading away down the left wall of the tomb. They filled the spaces in between the columns, matching those along the front, that were carved into the tomb's outer walls. There was a small memorial garden enclosed by a short iron fence on this side of the tomb, and as she walked along the front, staring in amazement, she discovered its twin on the other side. And of course, she thought, there are the windows and columns to match.

Who could this belong to? This hadn't been here before. She had taken walks in Summerland Cemetery – had led tours of Summerland Cemetery, and knew the tombs and the statues and monuments. She knew the famous names of the cemetery, and had known the resting places of most of them. Koontz, Rendell, Sagan, Matheson, Bradbury, Ellroy, Wiltse, and others... all the old, wealthy families of Silent Hill. This tomb was not familiar, but was somehow important. The maze had led her here, and it seemed to be the central focus of the entire Summerland Cemetery labyrinth – in the vine-covered fence around the edge of this space there were more openings where more corridors undoubtedly wound away through the cemetery.

So who rested here and why were they so important? Was this where Kitty had been?  
There was a splash of color at the foot of the steps. She crept closer to inspect it and discovered on the ground, at the feet of the last statue in the procession up the stairs, what had been a patchwork quilt. It lay in tangled shreds, bright fabric ripped to pieces. She picked up a scrap and looked closely – these were her stitches. This was her handiwork. She would have made a quilt like this for her daughter. The tight, perfect, looping stitches and nearly invisible seams that made it appear that all the squares of the quilt had simply come together of their own accord. This was Mary-Elizabeth's blanket and Augusta had made it for her. She had probably lain on the steps of this tomb, wrapped tight in this blanket.

Now it was ripped apart as though by something with vicious, giant claws... and there was the glint of metal under the shredded quilt. Augusta threw the cloth aside, her breath catching in her throat, close to tears and close to panic.

A collar on a chain fastened to the slender ankle of the last statue in the procession.

Dropping her shovel, Augusta clapped her hands over her mouth to smother the scream. Be calm, some part of her mind tried to advise. Stay calm. The quilt looks like it was clawed to pieces, and there's a collar on a chain. Maybe Kitty wasn't chained up here. Maybe it was an animal. Maybe there was a big dog, or a big cat – what would have claws like this, a tiger, a lion? – chained here. There's no blood. Not a trace – maybe this is just an animal's bed.

But why would it have Kitty's blanket? Why would it have the quilt Augusta would have made for her daughter? Who could have even gotten it to use as a bed for the animal? This quilt didn't even exist. Not in the real world, at any rate. Of course, here where mists rolled on and the snowflakes fell, and flowers bloomed out of season, where a monster made of dead white men could devour the man who had lain on the sofa, she could hold the shreds of the quilt in her hands. She stood and dropped the ruined bit of the quilt and glanced frantically at the tomb, the fence with its morning glory vines, and everything else in sight. This tomb was important – it had to be because the paths of the maze led to it. And, it seemed to her this was where Kitty had been. The gates of Summerland Cemetery were far behind her and the tomb was to the left of the gates – far ahead and to the left, and it was from far ahead and to the left that Kitty's screams seemed to have come.

A thought – how had Kitty known Augusta was passing by the cemetery gates? The mist was as thick as it had been since she was pulled into Silent Hill, and it still stole from sight everything more than a few yards away. "Oh, God," said Augusta and put the heel of her fist to her forehead as a tear of frustration slid down her cheek. "I don't know what's going on, but please let me find her. Please let her be alright. Please help me, dear God."

She snapped to attention as a hollow banging sounded from the tomb. She was still holding her shovel, she realized as she instantly brought it up, ready to swing. Her nostrils flared as she grimaced and stared at the tomb's fancy bronze doors. Something was pounding hard on the doors from the other side, from the inside of the tomb. Something wanted out.

She thought immediately of Kitty, but whatever was pounding on the doors seemed far too large to be her tiny daughter. It was something strong and angry. Perhaps the thing that had screamed so furiously so many times as she had stumbled her way through the cemetery maze. Or perhaps the thing with such large claws as to have shredded a well-crafted quilt.

In between blows landing on the door at the top of the stairs from where she stood, wary and armed with her shovel, Augusta heard a sudden rustling. It came from her right, then her left. She spun to her right, ready with the shovel – the rustling seemed to be coming from the tiny gardens beside the tomb, and it seemed to be the sound of leaves whispering against themselves in a breeze – but wasn't because as she watched, a large azalea bush behind the low iron fence grew a fur of lozenge-shaped green leaves, then burst into flame red blossom.

It was simply the sound of the garden coming to life. The other memorial garden on the left side of the tomb was doing the same. She stared as the plants inside the garden fences grew and leafed and flowered. Hollyhocks rose up on tall stalks, their flowers popping open one after another. There were more azaleas, of all colors, and gladiolas with their frilly blossoms and leaves like green blades. As the flowers grew the pounding on the door grew angrier, more frantic, but weakened until it was a tapping. Then it was gone.

Augusta stared, waiting, but heard nothing more. The deadly stillness of Silent Hill had returned while fog swirled around the new bright flowers of the memorial gardens. Care to see what's inside, she asked herself. Something in the tomb had definitely wanted to come outside to see her – something that must have been affected by the sudden burst of growth in the gardens, though she wondered how that could be. An image formed in her mind of the thing that had pulled her through the sculpture at the mouth of Wiltse Hill Tunnel, with its hundreds of black arms lashed to the ground and rendered harmless by morning glory vines. Wouldn't that be nice, she thought bitterly, and stared angrily at the tomb.

It was important; every path in the maze led to it. Her daughter's quilt lay in rags on its steps. She was sure it was from here she had heard her daughter's screams. There was something inside that had wanted to come out to get her, probably kill her, but was thwarted by the flowers in its own gardens, which was a surreal thought, but she couldn't find another way to explain it.

Maybe seeing who's inside will help me figure out what's going on here. Maybe seeing who's buried inside will help me figure out how to find Kitty – because she's not here, not that I can see.

She realized her knuckles had blanched around the handle of the shovel, and relaxed her grip. She scowled at the tomb, then walked to the foot of the stairs and started up.


	21. The nameless tomb

Please note that I've updated Chapter 20 – I added more to it after I initially published it, and after realizing the formatting screwed up when I re-posted the chapter with the additions from my home computer (which uses a different version of Windows than my work computer), I've fixed it so that it ought to be good and readable again. You might want to go back and reread it before starting on this one! Thanks.

The bronze double doors featured a fabulously detailed relief of ecstatic souls swirling up to the gates of heaven, where angels waited to welcome them. It was an awesome work of art that looked as though it belonged on display in the finest museums of Chicago or St. Louis. Giant bronze rings, fashioned to look like coils of rope, hung heavy. Give a hard pull and they would open the doors. Augusta stared at them warily.

Where was the name of the person buried inside? Someone who would build such a grand tomb for themselves would want everyone to know who they had been. Someone who would build such a tomb for another person would want everyone to know who had been important enough to deserve such a magnificent monument. This was Summerland Cemetery's Taj Mahal. So why was there no name on the tomb?

She chewed her lower lip nervously. The tomb and the cemetery were still and quiet. There was something in there that had wanted out. It had wanted to burst out and get her until the gardens bloomed and drove it back.

It seemed to be gone now, though. She reached out to touch the doors, marveling as she ran her fingers across the exquisite details of an angel's wing.

She heard nothing. She knocked on the doors and after the noise of her knuckles ringing on the metal faded, still heard nothing. She pounded on the doors with a tightly curled fist and still heard nothing at all.

Was it waiting, just on the other side? Would it jump out as soon as it saw the first bar of murky daylight?

The hell with it. She wasn't accomplishing anything just standing here. Her child was still out there somewhere, and she needed to get moving – there hadn't been a drop of blood on the shredded quilt, no sign of Kitty, and she had no idea where her daughter might have gone. The tomb might answer some questions. If nothing else she had her shovel, and if she couldn't fight off whatever might be lurking inside, at least she might be able to hit it, stun it, and run away.

"Famous last words," she muttered, grasped the rings and yanked open the doors.

The bronze doors groaned open onto a wonder of candlelight. The scent of dust spiced with flowers and incense wafted out, and she had to wipe her nose to ward off a sneeze. She stepped in, and the doors gently creaked closed behind her.

The tomb looked even larger inside than it did from outside. A cavern of gentle gothic gloom, it commanded reverence. Weak, watery light filtered in through the stained glass windows, all of which showed scenes of angels in prayer. In the cloudy light from outside, they radiated the faintest rainbow glow, but in direct sunlight, they would throw splashes of color like spilled paint wherever the light touched.

But the sun doesn't shine in this Silent Hill, Augusta thought.

Tall iron candelabras crowded near the walls, where black marble columns strained upward to support a ribcage of arches leading away toward the back of the tomb. From the apex of each arch, iron chandeliers hung from long chains and glowed with halos of flickering candles. The floor was a mosaic, dizzyingly intricate, of bands of black and white marble entwined that seemed to radiate outward from a grand central circle of black marble inlaid with a massive seal, probably a family crest, in some kind of yellow metal.

Surely not gold she thought, then as she gazed around the tomb, thought, why not?

In the center of the seal stood a long pedestal draped in swales of crimson velvet, and atop the pedestal sat a coffin.

A tomb this massive for a single person; it was bizarre. In all the other grand grave monuments of Summerland Cemetery a tomb like this would be the resting place of several generations of an entire family. Coffins would rest, layer upon layer, in large spaces set into the walls, sealed behind marble panels carved with names and dates. There would usually be a tiny altar in the claustrophobic little hall between the ranks of caskets, where a votive candle would gutter in a draft, and fading photographs of lost loved ones would peer out from behind dusty glass and tarnished frames.

The other fine tombs of Summerland were places of reflection, places to remember the lives led by beloved family who had gone on. This tomb was not. It was nothing more than arrogance in black marble. Augusta frowned, and shivered.

There was a shape at the rear of the tomb. Augusta tensed, and stared at it, holding her breath... before she recognized it as a large statue of an angel, wings folded around its shoulders like a cloak, head bowed, its arms outstretched, hands cupped. A wisp of smoke rose from the cup of its hands as she watched – incense. An incense burner. Augusta stepped forward, bent to peer around the coffin presented like a museum exhibit in the middle of the tomb, and saw flowers heaped at the statue's feet.

"Okay," she said quietly.

So who's buried here? Why are they so damned important? She approached the coffin, almost on tiptoe. She imagined if she made much noise at all, something would burst out of the coffin and be upon her before she'd even had time to scream – she tried to chase the image out of her mind, and failed.

The coffin was made of rich, dark wood, inlaid with gold and sporting gold handles, hinges, and latches, and two long gold poles that would be used by pallbearers to carry it. There was nothing on the velvet-draped pedestal, nothing on the lid, nothing to indicate who lay inside. Which meant she would have to open it and see for herself.

Her heart sank, mired in cold.

"Oh, God," she whispered.

Why am I doing this? This is the part in all the movies where the moron heroine is about to do something catastrophically stupid that will let the monster out, and you're yelling at the screen through a mouthful of popcorn for her not to do it, but she does it anyway. The only thing I could do that would be any more idiotic would be to run away from whatever pops out at me, then turn my ankle, fall down, and just lay on the ground and wait for it to come kill me.

She took a step back, and then another, breathing heavily.

This tomb has something to do with my daughter – whoever is inside that casket has something to do with my daughter. She was here. I just feel that she was. That was her quilt outside and I heard her screaming for me. She's gone away somewhere, and I couldn't help her, but finding out who is inside that casket might give me some idea of what to do now. I might learn something I need to know to find her, help her, and get her back.

Once I get her back, I'll never let her out of my sight again. I'll never stop praying my thanks to You, oh God. I just want to find her and get out of here. Please.

I have to open that coffin – please protect me. Please don't let whatever's inside hurt me. Please just give me this second chance. Let me find my daughter and take her home. I just want to get out of this place.

She stepped forward and stood by the coffin for a moment before she tensed and squeezed her eyes shut for a final quick prayer, then opened her eyes. Clutching the shovel handle with her right hand, she reached forward with her left – the coffin lid was frigid – and flipped the latch and heaved open the casket.

The lid flew open, bounced on its hinges and nearly slammed itself shut again. It bounced several more times, quivered, stilled, and its golden hinges were bent. A sandy, peppery odor gasped out, but nothing more. The corpse inside was still.

Joseph appeared to have been dead for quite some time. He had not decayed well, but was perfectly recognizable – Augusta had no doubt. Joseph's clasped hands clutched a plaque, and though she didn't need to read it, she did anyway:

Joseph Bardino North

But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear. – Isaiah 59:2

His name and a verse from the Bible, and nothing more. She stared, dumbstruck. His hands had mummified – his skin had been as dark as hers, but what little remained to cover the bones of his fingers had lightened to the color of sand. He looked shrunken inside what he had considered his uniform as manager of the Lake View Hotel – a white shirt and black slacks, shined shoes, braided leather belt, and a silk tie with a colorful, abstract design in red, black, and white. A sprinkling of dried, crumbled skin dusted his shirt where his hands clasped the plaque.

The flesh of his face had dried, tightened, and blackened, and it looked as though his face had been messily sculpted from tar. His mouth screamed open around his tongue, dried behind his teeth like a shriveled slug. There was his mustache and goatee. His eyes were gone, dried away, the sockets black and empty.

Augusta realized her mouth was open, and clapped it shut so hard her teeth clacked together as she reread the plaque. Your sins have torn you away from God and now he won't hear your prayers.

Joseph was mocking her. That had always been his way – find the softest spot, plunge in the knife, and give it a twist, and the guilt of the past five years now shot out at her like shrapnel, every twisted shard ripping through all the way to the bone.

Guilt that he had caused.

"I'm well aware of my iniquities," she said quietly through clenched teeth.

Then she screamed, "YOU SON OF A BITCH!! WHY ARE YOU HERE!!" and with a single vicious kick that vibrated up through her entire body she lashed out and sent Joseph's coffin tumbling from its perch and onto the floor.

She was furious, far too angry to be afraid now.

"You sick FUCK!!" she raged. "It figures you'd be arrogant enough to put yourself in a tomb like this. You don't deserve anything like this and you never did – you were a waste of oxygen, and I'm sorry I ever met you. It's because of you that I gave up what would have been the best thing that ever happened to me! You talked me into having an abortion, and I'll suffer for that the rest of my life –"

She threw her shovel aside and hurtled across the velvet-draped pedestal. Blood roared in her ears and pounded behind her eyes so hard her vision blurred with every heartbeat. She dropped to the floor beside the overturned coffin and heaved it upright. Inside it, Joseph was disintegrating. More skin had flaked off, including his entire upper lip, still bristly with the remains of his mustache. His nose had crumbled off.

She stood and kicked the coffin, watching with satisfaction as the body inside shifted stiffly from side to side.

"Where is my child?" she screamed at the body, and knew she would not be given an answer.

She glared down at Joseph, fuming, then she snorted, coughed and brought up the largest glob of mucus she could manage and spat it squarely into his left eye socket. She kicked the coffin again, and again, and kept kicking until her leg tingled all the way up to the knee as she watched Joseph jostle about inside.

Fists clenched and every muscle in her body as tight as wire, she stomped away from the coffin, around the pedestal to her shovel where it lay on the floor. She bent stiffly and grabbed it and stormed away.

She hurled open the magnificent bronze doors and thundered across the porch and down the stairs. She couldn't remember ever having been this enraged. If anything jumped out at her now, she would feed it its heart. She didn't know why Joseph was here, and didn't know why he would be sealed inside such a fine tomb, and she didn't give a flying fuck.

Her daughter needed to be found, and as far as she was concerned she had just wasted her time and her energy on Joseph, who wasn't worth the slightest bit of either. He was dead – she didn't know when or how, but again, as far as she was concerned, he deserved to be, however it had happened and however long ago.

But he had something to do with her daughter. He was somehow involved with the entire reason she was here. She didn't know how. Her daughter had sent her the Mother's Day card.

Hadn't she? Augusta stared into the mist swirling through Summerland Cemetery, teeth bared, her heart pounding.

The message written inside the card had addressed her as Mommy, but Kitty had called her Mama. She shrugged off her backpack, unzipped it fiercely, and tore through the items inside in search of the card. When she found it, she brought it out, snatched it from its pale pink envelope and opened it to read it again.

I love you Mommy. You are the best Mommy ever. Love, Mary-Elizabeth.

There it was. Twice. Mommy. And the signature. Mary-Elizabeth would have been called Kitty, just like Augusta's mother. Would she have signed a card with her full name and not her nickname?

Augusta studied the envelope, as she had only yesterday morning. Lamb Avenue, the street where the school that Kitty would have attended stood. If Kitty had sent the card from school, would she have been required to sign her full name? Augusta didn't think so. She remembered when she was in school, children who hated their first names went by their middle names, and children known by a nickname were free to go by that name from kindergarten on through senior year, college, and into the real world waiting beyond.

Something was wrong here. She turned, very slowly, to look at Joseph's grave in all its splendor. The self-important fuck. Demanding more than he ever deserved even in death.

When had he died? Maybe she should start caring, because something was very, very wrong.

Who had been pounding on the door, wanting so badly to come out and hurt her? Joseph? Who had screamed again and again, and made the earth tremble? Joseph?

A thought. Whose arms had pulled Kitty away into the darkness of Wiltse Hill Tunnel, and then pulled her through the woven cables of the Welcome sculpture and into this cool, damp hell?

Joseph's?

Suddenly, she was trembling so badly her knees knocked together and threatened to dump her on the ground. Something was watching. She could feel it. And whatever it was, it was extremely unhappy. Its rage was deeper and darker than anything she could imagine, and made her anger look as calm as a lake on a windless day.

Joseph?

She could imagine what he had wanted. She should have been not only awed, but intimidated by his grand tomb – the black marble palace he had conjured for himself. The flowers shouldn't have burst into bloom and driven him away from the door. He had wanted to roar out at her and tear her apart, but kept from that, even inside the tomb, she should not have kicked his coffin off its pedestal and spat on him.

That was disrespectful.

She should not have mocked his tomb, shouldn't have dismissed it as elegant idiocy in stone and bronze. She should have been properly frightened once inside the tomb, and properly horrified at having to open the coffin, and properly appalled at what was inside. She should have burst into tears and wrung her hands and wet her jeans. She should have declared she just didn't know what to do and break down and have a good weep, and then wander around the hell of Silent Hill until something ate her, or drove a knife up her vagina just as Walter Sullivan had done to Miriam Locane in 1954, or ripped her apart with its bare hands just as Joshua Blackwell had his brother's wife in 1918.

That was what Joseph had wanted. He wanted her to suffer and then to die, and nothing more.

Augusta was not interested in playing the part of the maiden too fair and delicate to do what needed to be done, and she never had been. If Joseph had wanted her here for no other reason than to terrify and torture her, he had obviously been rudely surprised.

But I'm good and scared now, she thought, backing away.

Who had been here first – Joseph or Kitty? She imagined Joseph, slowly drying in the confines of his casket, relishing a sweet cruelty and summoning her to Silent Hill, a city that no longer existed where the dead could call to the living to make them suffer for their sins. She imagined Kitty, her beautiful, perfect, dead little girl in Silent Hill all along, as delighted and surprised to suddenly find her Mama here as Augusta had been to find her child. And she imagined Joseph oblivious of Kitty's presence, surprised and slyly pleased in a repugnant, malignant way at having a splendid new way to rip out Augusta's heart.

Or maybe Kitty had lived in her mind all along, ridden along in her dreams all this time, springing to life in her Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt and her jeans with embroidered red hearts only now in the new, ugly world of Silent Hill. After all, Weeping Mary had thanked her for "bringing the child." Perhaps people who didn't exist could only come to life in a town that no longer existed. Perhaps Kitty had never set foot in Silent Hill until today.

Either way, Joseph must have been ecstatic at having a new way to torture Augusta.

Was that how it was? Was that how it had happened?

Tell me, oh God, tell me. Help me! Tell me what's going on here.

And please help me find my child. I have to find her and get her to safety. He'll hurt her too. Please, God, help me.

She turned and ran, circling Joseph's tomb. There was no sign of Kitty, and she hadn't thought there would be. There had been no blood on the shredded quilt. Kitty was somewhere else. If she had ever been here at all, she had gotten away.

Maybe Kitty had shredded the quilt as she escaped. But how would such a tiny girl have the strength? Augusta dismissed the thought. It was silly. The quilt had probably been used as a bed for some large, vicious animal chained to Joseph's tomb. Kitty had been here but had escaped.

No blood, not a drop anywhere. Maybe Kitty hadn't been hurt. Please, God.

I have to find her. Guide me. Take me to her, I beg of You.

Behind the tomb a giant hole had been ripped in the fence and the morning glory vines hung down like a curtain. She ran for the hole, burst through the vines, and discovered another hole in the fence directly ahead, just across the maze's corridor.

Behind her, she could sense something growing in the tomb, swelling to fill it. Joseph was not happy. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. Augusta ran on.

From the tomb came a shriek of rending metal, and then the furious sound, the familiar, deep, throaty roar, cut short once more as the vines around her, blanketing the fence, exploded to life once again. Again, they thrashed, writhed, curled over and around one another, and a billion blossoms, blue, purple, and white opened up with velvety, silent trumpet blasts. The roar in the distance behind her became a howl of pain and she felt tears slipping down her cheeks. Thank You, God. Oh, thank You.

The holes torn through the fence took her all the way to Sagan Street, where she burst out of the cemetery, tripped over her own feet, and hit the sidewalk so hard she saw stars.

She curled up, bringing her knees to her chest, covered her face, and wept. Joseph was trapped in the cemetery and she was safe – as safe as one could be in Silent Hill. But at least Joseph couldn't get her out here. And he couldn't get Kitty. She would find her daughter and take her home.

And, she thought, she was finally beginning to figure out what was going on, and why she was here, and as terrible as it was, it was a relief.


	22. The god who rode in magic

PLEASE NOTE: As usual, I was in a hurry to finish that last chapter, and due to that, I think it ended up a little barebones, so I added a few paragraphs here and there. A reread might be in order. And here we go with this new chapter! I'll probably decide it's too barebones as well and add more later. In the meantime, I hope it gets the images and the point across. I anyone feels compelled to review it, I'd like to know if you think things are progressing logically. Augusta's suddenly having more than a few epiphanies and I'd like to know if they're realistic deductions. Thanks for all the feedback, and thanks for reading!

By the time she heard the rasp of scales across pavement, and a long, airy hiss, it was too late and Weeping Mary, with a sweep of her talons, had picked up Augusta and hurled her against the vine-draped cemetery fence. Dazed, Augusta slid down the fence, feeling vines tear and watching sparks drift across her vision.

Weeping Mary's face was still lovely and framed in springy, glossy black curls, though now she wore a look of predatory hatred, her mouth twisted into a snarl beneath her sunglasses.

To her waist, her body was still normal, except for the giant claws, so large it seemed they must break her arms, sparkling with the crystal blisters of innumerable jewels. The skimpy top with its hungry parrot still strained to cover her breasts, though below the tan flatness of her midsection, her legs had been replaced by a coiled serpent's tail as thick as a tire. The diamond-shaped markings, brown on tan, were those of a rattlesnake, and as if to shake off any remaining doubt, Weeping Mary raised the tip of her tail, where a huge rattle like a chain of noxious brown tumors clattered threateningly. Gold, and chips of gems, nestled glittering in every crevice of the rattle.

"How," she said, and her voice had become a sound like metal scraping on stone, "is such a silly woman as yourself able to so bedevil a god like me?"

"And how," Augusta could feel Weeping Mary's voice against her teeth, and vibrating through her bones, "does a silly woman expect a queen to rule her kingdom when the silly woman keeps spiriting away her subjects?"

"I don't know what you mean," Augusta said in barely more than a whisper. She pressed herself against the fence, as far away as she could get from the thing addressing her.

No longer encumbered by her legs or her waist, Weeping Mary struck like a cobra, her claws sparking as they skipped along the sidewalk. Augusta yelped and in her surprise, banged her head against the cold iron bars of the fence behind her. Now, her face less than a yard away from Augusta's, Weeping Mary cocked her head and grinned.

Behind her lips, her teeth had become a double row of fangs, and a forked tongue flicked in and out between them.

"Oh, but you do, my darling dear," she hissed. "I told you once before I rarely have little ones to play with, and that's why I so treasure the ones I'm able to keep. And yet, today alone you've snatched four away from me. And your scarred god's whore whom you've befriended has taken yet another – she's taken your little one from me."

"I no longer have your child, my dear, and because that breaks the deal I'd held with the man in the black tomb, ordinarily that would mean my quarrel with you is done. I'd leave you be to the mercy of the creatures of your heart's own darkness. But you've taken the children from me. And you've taken others from me as well today, including not only a good many Innocent, but two fine soldiers in my army."

"And that means..." Her giant claws shot out, tearing through the morning glories to grasp at the fence beneath them. She clenched her fists, and metal shrieked as it bent. "...you've made an enemy of me, love."

She unclenched one fist, extended a claw and stroked it along Augusta's cheek. Augusta squirmed with revulsion, eyes wide, breath wheezing in and out in little gasps. She could see her reflection in Weeping Mary's sunglasses and thought that her dark skin must have gone ashy from fear.

"I feed on suffering. Did you know that? And this town is built on suffering – I rode here in the magic of my people, and they nourished me for many a year. And even when there was hardly one left to worship me further, I still flourished because I've built a nest for myself in this town. I built it out of pain – over the years this city has stood, I've collected twigs for my nest, and there were always more to gather. I know because I planted the trees on which they grow, one in every heart. Do you understand what I mean?"

"No," Augusta whimpered.

"I feed on suffering, you fool! And I create suffering to feed on! I trap souls and suck them dry, and over time I've amassed an entire army to inflict the pain that nourishes me, torturing those souls. You've taken away some of the souls I feed upon and because of that..."

She snarled and pounded a fist into the sidewalk nearby, shattering the cement. Tiny, sharp stone chips spat into the air.

"I'll take your suffering. To replace what you've taken from me, I'll feed on you. I'll wring every drop out of you before I shit out your withered husk, woman, and there's nothing your scarred god or his whore can do about it. Now do you understand me?"

Augusta understood.

"Yes, I do," she said and was pleasantly surprised at the firmness of her voice, "and I don't care. You can do whatever you want with me if you'll only leave my child alone. She doesn't deserve any of this. I do. I'm the one who sinned."

Weeping Mary giggled. "You'll live to regret those words, dearest. You'll live much, much longer than you'd care to, and besides... I'm not and never was the only one who could hurt your child. Don't be so foolish to think she's safe with your god's whore. She's only safe from me."

She pushed herself away with her claws, reared high in the air, then slithered away into the mist, laughing. Augusta stared into the fog after her, not daring to move, afraid that if she did, Weeping Mary would hear and hurtle back toward her out of the mist, grinning her terrible, sharp grin. Her heart pounded.

She sat trembling for what seemed like several minutes, the cold of the cement seeping through her jeans, until she was sure Weeping Mary was truly gone. When she finally stood, her knees buckled and threw her against the fence, and she slid down to the sidewalk again. Dried, dead crumbles of leaves sifted down around her and she looked up, surprised, to discover the morning glories on the Summerland Cemetery fence were dead. All of them, except for the tiny patch where her back had touched the wrought iron tines.

"Oh, God," she sobbed.

Then she thought, a deal with the man in the black tomb? What kind of deal had Weeping Mary made with Joseph? And she realized, with the vines brown and dead, there was probably nothing to keep Joseph inside the boundaries of Summerland Cemetery, much less locked in his tomb.

So she got to her feet and ran away on unsteady legs.

It seemed more important than ever that she make her way to the library, Augusta thought as she jogged along Sagan Street. Weeping Mary's words screeched at their own echoes in her mind.

"I rode here in the magic of my people..."

Who else in Silent Hill had ever had ties to any sort of magic at all, but the first settlers of the town? The followers of a strange religion deemed threatening even by the most dangerous magicians and sorceresses of New Orleans, driven out of that city to wander until they found their haven in the swamps of Toluca County.

"...a god... a queen to rule her kingdom..."

She was the evil god they had worshipped, their queen, and this had been her kingdom. Silent Hill and all its people, all these years, had been watched over by a monster.

"...you've snatched four away from me. And your scarred god's whore whom you've befriended has taken yet another..."

Miriam and Billy Locane. That made two. The girl whose head had been chopped off, lying dead on the floor of the dining saloon aboard the Little Baroness. Three. Who was the fourth child? Maybe Deanna Blackwell's unborn baby. Or maybe there had been another murdered child aboard the ship, one she hadn't seen. As Augusta had – punished? – their murderers, she had set them free, and they had gone away, out of reach of the monster who fed on their torment.

Your scarred god's whore? Who could that be, and what the hell did that mean? Who had she even seen since arriving? Silent Hill was almost utterly deserted. There had only been the man who had lain on the sofa, and the ghosts, and... the Blue Lady. Maybe her. The Blue Lady seemed a benign presence, and one of the paintings onboard the Little Baroness had depicted, among other things, the Blue Lady as an angel with majestic wings of peacock feathers, filling the sky.

And a scarred god would refer to the marks of the Crucifixion. The holes in Christ's hands, feet, and side, the welts of the scourge, and the marks of the thorns on His scalp.

Weeping Mary was a demon, the Blue Lady an angel. Augusta thought she was beginning to understand her nightmare. And of course the two would call each other nasty names, because they'd hardly be enemies if they didn't.

"...the deal I'd held with the man in the black tomb..."

It was somehow not surprising. Maybe Joseph had actually expected Augusta to bring Kitty along for the ride. He wanted only to torture her, and to take away her child... Augusta thought, you couldn't find a better way to torture a mother if you stayed up late to think about it.

Except she'd never been a mother, because she had murdered her child. Except in Silent Hill, it seemed life and death had little meaning now and could twist and warp themselves, meld and pull apart, in the most amazing ways.

"...two fine soldiers in my army..."

Walter Sullivan and Joshua Blackwell, and God only knew how many more because Silent Hill had never been known for its remarkably low crime rate.

That was Weeping Mary's fault. She had admitted it – she fed on suffering and created suffering to feed on. What was suffering but a little boy raped to death and a girl with a cold steel blade stabbed deep inside, and an entire family hunted down and killed one by one by a monster with an axe? Their victims were the Innocent, and they were the soldiers in Weeping Mary's army, entrusted with the duty of stabbing or raping or tearing apart their victims time and again through the years to nourish her. How many more could there be? How large was her army?

Augusta thought of Toluca Prison, where thousands of Confederate soldiers had been tortured to death, and whose brutality had afterwards been the stain on the Illinois state prison system, long collapsed and sunk beneath the lake

"I'll take your suffering... I'll feed on you."

That needed no explanation. She had to get to the library. Weeping Mary had an army. It would be helpful to know who the soldiers were.

Weeping Mary was a demon once worshipped as a god, and it would be helpful to learn how that had come to be.

So Augusta ran on along Sagan Street, past Summerland Cemetery and its fence buried beneath dead vines. Something else Weeping Mary had said echoed, and it terrified her.

"Don't think she's safe... She's only safe from me."

That meant someone else could harm Kitty, probably Joseph. If he wanted to hurt Augusta, to make her scream and plead and beg, there would be no better way than to hurt her daughter.

Maybe Joseph was a part of Weeping Mary's army.

Why not?

Sagan Street ended just ahead at a sharp right angle where Glover Avenue launched itself northward. Summerland Cemetery followed the curve and ran north for another block before halting at Massey Street and the bridge that carried it over the Illiniwak River into East Silent Hill. The library would be just north of the bridge, along the riverbank with the water to one side and the shorter edges of three rectangular downtown blocks to the other.

Except that a sinkhole had opened up in the street just ahead, a crater eaten across Sagan Street. Like the others she had seen, it stretched across the street, into the cemetery to her right and under a building across the street to her left. She turned. The building was a bank housed in squat brick building. Its windows were shattered, but it looked otherwise untouched – take another step closer though, she thought, and the whole thing would topple forward into the hole. She sighed her frustration through gritted teeth and turned back. She had to hurry.

Augusta crossed the street and as soon as she could, turned north, onto Olson Avenue. Just ahead would be Burke Square. The old brick buildings of downtown Silent Hill sagged in the fog, their windows smeared and cloudy, their awnings shredded. She passed a café with wrought iron chairs and tables rusting on the sidewalk outside its doors. The rust had run down the legs of every table and chair, and blotched the sidewalk.

It looks like bloodstains, Augusta thought, and walked on.

Only to find a canyon stretching across Olson Avenue short of its intersection with Massey Street. The hole had tunneled through the building to her right, on the east side of the avenue. Most of the first floor had collapsed, leaving the second floor perched atop a giant, ragged archway. The windows in the apartment on the second floor looked untouched. Augusta shook her head in amazement.

Across Olson Avenue, an enormous building loomed unharmed, with the canyon reduced to little more than a wide crack snaking under its walls. Augusta recognized the building, with its dark brick and tall pointed windows as the Robert Black Memorial Auditorium. Regularly spaced along its walls, brick columns shot skyward and narrowed to points like tiny church spires high above the roof, but from where she stood, the mist obscured even the roof, and the fancy brickwork at the tips of the pillars was invisible.

She crossed the street and discovered that even at its narrowest point, the sinkhole in Olson Avenue was still too wide to jump across. She cursed, and was thinking of the walk back toward Sagan Street, and back toward Summerland Cemetery, when she noticed an alley running between the auditorium and the neighboring building. Unless it too had collapsed somewhere along its path to Jones Street, the next street parallel to Olson Avenue, she could use the alley to find, hopefully, a clear path north to the square then east to the library.

Augusta began to run. Without the vines and flowers to hold him, Joseph could have already found his way out of Summerland Cemetery, and might already be coming for her, or Kitty. She had to get away, and get to the library to learn more about the people who had once worshipped Weeping Mary, and about those, the murderers and torturers and rapists, whom she had claimed for her own throughout Silent Hill's history.

And if she was very lucky, she might come across the Blue Lady, and Kitty, and finally be able to take her daughter home, get away from Weeping Mary, and away from this evil place.

And if I'm very, very lucky, she thought bitterly, I might grow a pair of wings myself and the fog and the snow might clear up, and I could just search from the air. Wouldn't that be nice?

Weeping Mary could come for her at any moment, or send her army marching out to put her through the same hells they had inflicted on their victims. And she knew Joseph was already probably on his way to get her, and Kitty. There was no time, and as she darted through the alley, Augusta realized an open pair of metal doors had slipped by on her right. She skidded to a halt, almost panting, and stared at the doors for a moment.

She was familiar with the auditorium and could easily find her way through the building to its grand front entrance on Burke Square. It would save time, and if she slammed the doors shut behind her, and locked them, it might slow down anyone or anything following.

Then again, there might be something inside as dangerous as anything she would find outside on the streets of Silent Hill in the mist and falling snowflakes. She debated, clutching her shovel, and finally decided she would feel at least somewhat safer with a locked door between her and Joseph.

So she stepped inside and closed and locked the doors behind her.


	23. Why my mother died alone and in pain

The latch clicked as the lock caught and Augusta had sealed herself into a dank black silence that rang in her ears and stung her throat with the tang of mildew. She turned slowly in the dark, putting the steel doors behind her, and trying to make as little noise as she could. As nice as it was to have some sort of barrier between her and Joseph, anything might be scuttling about inside the auditorium.

She remembered the dilemma faced in the Ridgeview Medical Clinic Building, seemingly so long ago -- use a flashlight to make her way safely through the darkness, or try to slip silently through that darkness and hope not to attract the attention of something gruesome and shambling? Or, she thought, have light enough to see to run away from anything inside or to whack it with the shovel, or fall off the stage and break my neck in the orchestra pit?

She swung the backpack around, unzipped it and pulled out the flashlight on its long strap, then zipped the backpack closed again and shouldered it back into place. The strap again went around her neck, and the flashlight swung gently against her hip. It switched on with a reassuring click, and Augusta discovered she stood in a narrow hallway behind the auditorium's main stage. There were several passages here at the back of the building, each lined with dressing rooms, offices, and storage closets, and their walls were covered with bulletin boards and posters. Each board had once sported a colorful slew of playbills, photos, and schedules tacked in place, though now, she saw, after five years of damp pouring in through the open doors (had they really been open all this time?), the bulletin boards were swollen and bowed. Everything they had once displayed had been reduced to soggy, tattered scraps.

It seemed somehow unutterably sad.

The floor was gritty with the accumulated filth and grime of abandonment; dried carapaces of dead beetles and roaches crunched underfoot. She passed by offices and dressing rooms where everything inside was rusted and decayed. In one, she saw a dressing table spread beneath a giant mirror, now blackened, ringed with bulbs. Jars of cosmetics, theatrical makeup probably, clustered on the tabletop, as though huddling together for safety. Their contents had probably hardened to the consistency of cement by now.

This is so wrong, she thought. Robert Black Memorial Auditorium had been home to the Silent Hill Community Theatre ("Be Shocked by SHCT!" had been their motto), one of the finest small theater groups in the Midwest. In between their wildly popular performances, the auditorium hosted graduations and lectures, especially contentious city council meetings whose crowds couldn't fit into the tiny auditorium at City Hall, and performances by the Silent Hill Symphony Orchestra and the Silent Hill Community Band. Like Silent Hill itself, the auditorium had always been so full of life, and like the city, it was decaying in the wet darkness now.

She again thought of websites devoted to the beauty and eerie grace of decay in abandoned buildings. She had seen sites devoted exclusively to hospitals, another to the handful of abandoned skyscrapers that loomed over downtown Detroit. One she had seen even chronicled a woman's motorcycle tour of the ghost city of Chernobyl in the Ukraine – from her Yamaha, her Geiger counter at hand, the woman had taken scores of pictures of the ruined shops and towering apartment blocks, many of which still had, twenty years later, laundry draped over their balconies and all of which were still stocked with furniture and clothing and everything else the modern Soviet family would have needed that horrible day long ago. Because of radiation contamination from the accident at the nuclear power plant, nothing was allowed out of the city and thus everything had been left behind.

Silent Hill reminded her of Chernobyl, she suddenly realized. As if here, like there, a hideous toxic cloud had swept down and sent its residents fleeing and then contaminated everything, every building and every object inside, left behind. Everything seemed to have been left untouched here, as it had been in the Ridgeview Clinic, and in every store and apartment she had passed by. Curtains left hanging in windows, paperwork left scattered on desktops, a playbill from a show five years ago on the floor in front of her.

She stopped and looked at it cautiously.

There was something strange about it. She played her light over it and watched a gleam bounce off its glossy paper, then she knelt to pick it up. Under her fingertips it felt new, with only the slightest bit of grit from the floor adhering. It couldn't have been here for long, less than a day even, because it hadn't wrinkled in the damp at all.

She read: "Emmy-Nominated Actress Lisa Groft Presents a One-Woman Show: The Tears of an Adult – Why my Mother Died Alone and in Pain"

Below was a picture of a stunningly beautiful blonde, unsmiling, with her chin in her hand, gazing into space.

Augusta opened the flyer and began to read. Apparently, Lisa Groft, presenter of the one-woman show, was from nearby Monticello, Illinois, between Decatur and Champaign-Urbana. From childhood, she had always aspired to be an actress, and began her ascent in high school when she appeared in every performance that had room for her, including 'Peter Pan' (as Wendy) and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (as Titania, Queen of the Faeries).

Augusta didn't care. She skimmed onward.

Degree in drama from the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem – Augusta raised her eyebrows at that – leading roles in 'Anything Goes' and 'On the Night of January the 16th' while enrolled there...

Performances at this playhouse and that theatre throughout the Southeast for a few years after graduation...

Moved to Los Angeles at age twenty-eight and immediately found work in a supporting role on a sitcom Augusta remembered as being especially insipid, though she had only watched it once or twice.

Still performed in plays and shows, most of which Augusta had either never heard of or didn't care about, throughout Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco.

Let her mother die alone. Here it was.

"While Lisa pursued her career, garnering accolades every step of the way, her mother, Geraldine Miller-Groft, remained behind in the tiny town of Monticello. Mrs. Groft was especially proud of her daughter's accomplishments because, when her husband abandoned the family when Lisa was still an infant, she had been forced to raise Lisa in a poverty-stricken, single-parent household.

Eventually, however, Mrs. Groft's health began to falter and then to fail due to a combination of diabetes and, later, stomach cancer.

While her diagnoses grew more bleak, Mrs. Groft's attempts to contact her daughter were always unsuccessful. Cards and letters from her mother were usually thrown away unopened by Lisa, and messages left on her answering machine were deleted immediately the moment Lisa first heard her mother's voice squawk from the speaker.

Lisa was uneager to be reminded of her childhood in a town and a state she considered beneath her talents. She would have liked nothing more than to have been born and raised in Hollywood by two glamorous parents who had scores of glamourous friends and acquaintances with connections in the movie industry. She was, and remains, a selfish bitch –"

Augusta paused. What was this? Who could have written this?

"– who would rather die than allow the tabloids to sink their talons into a juicy story like this, especially after her role as the kindly Sister Mary Ambrose in last year's box-office smash, 'Nun of Your Business', though most especially after her mother's death in April of this year. Lisa would prefer it not be known by the public that not only was she unaware that her mother had died, she was also ignorant of her mother's colossal suffering and loneliness in the last years of her life.

Until now.

Join us as Lisa discusses her feelings and her motivations for allowing her mother to die a slow and painful death all alone. Don't worry that Lisa might not show up to appear in this rollicking performance – she'll be here if she doesn't want her mother's agony screaming from the front page of every tabloid in America. Not to mention People Magazine, and the lips of a thousand news reporters who love nothing more than a nice tidbit of gossip. We guarantee you'll get your money's worth. Lisa wouldn't miss it for the world.

We know you wouldn't, Lisa. We know you'll come and put on a FINE show.

Love,

La Llorona"

Some get letters, the man who had lain on the sofa so long ago in the Ridgeview Medical Clinic had said. Some get phone calls, and he himself had received emails. Some get Mother's Day cards, Augusta thought, and some get glossy flyers.

She turned it over in her hands, and saw on the back nothing more than a tiny map showing the location of the Robert Black Memorial Auditorium in downtown Silent Hill marked with a bright blue star, as well as the auditorium's daily hours of operation. Below was the address as well as the legend inscribed in colored marble inlaid into the floor of the auditorium's regal lobby:

Robert Black Memorial Auditorium

1 South Burke Square

Silent Hill, Illinois 61723

"Let the Magic of the Stage Sing to Your Soul"

Just like every other playbill and flyer for every other performance put on by SHCT. Augusta dropped the flyer. She didn't want to look at it any more. She honestly didn't give the first damn about the lives and doings of famous people, and abhorred gossip, but this was appalling. She was familiar with Lisa Groft's nothing-short-of-angelic reputation. Everyone was.

But what was most offensive, she thought, was that the flyer looked so normal. The same shiny, high-quality paper, the same tiny map on the back, the dates and times and the legend from the lobby floor right where they had always been. It was unusual to find so much information about a single performer in a flyer, but Augusta couldn't remember anyone ever putting on a one-person show at the auditorium. Maybe if they had, their life would be outlined inside just like Lisa Groft's.

Lisa Groft, like so many others, had been called to Silent Hill to suffer for a sin, however. Who summoned her, though, Augusta wondered – her mother? Someone else? She thought of Joseph, the discolored, crumbling mummy in a coffin in a grand black tomb, still able to lure her to Silent Hill solely to torture her. Probably to death, because he had called her here for no other reason than that he hated her.

But would a mother, even one as mistreated as Lisa Groft's had been, call her child here to this wet hell and have her suffer through all the nasty surprises it could vomit out for her to find? Augusta couldn't imagine it. She wouldn't put her child through this even if her child had shot her in the stomach and giggled and kicked her while she bled to death.

But your child didn't kill you, a cheerful voice shrieked in her mind, you killed her! Of course the anesthetic had kicked your ass through the doors to dreamland by the time they did it, but I imagine they pulled her out in pieces! Do you suppose any part of Kitty was developed enough to feel that?

Augusta felt herself go cold.

"Oh, God," she said quietly, and put a hand over her stomach.

Think about something else. I'm wasting time, and there's something else to consider: Weeping Mary feeds on suffering, and whenever I stand in a decaying hallway like this, alone, afraid, worried, and guilty, Weeping Mary is probably rolling it around on her tongue like a fine wine, savoring the taste.

A mental itch had begun, but Augusta couldn't quite scratch it. If the guilty were called to Silent Hill to suffer for their sins, the act of punishment would free the soul of whoever had been wronged by the sinner, and Weeping Mary would have one less tormented soul to latch on to like the parasite she was. But the guilty soul would remain, perhaps even wallowing in guilt from now until the end of time. Perhaps she was simply trading one for another.

Did it make sense? Did anything make sense in Silent Hill?

And what was La Llorona? Augusta had heard of that somewhere once before.

It came to her: La Llorona... A ghost, or perhaps a mythical creature haunting the legends of Mexico and the American Southwest. The Weeping Woman. She had read about it in a book of ghost stories from around the world.

Weeping Mary. Weeping Mary had called Lisa Groft (of 'Nun of Your Business' and much, much more) to Silent Hill. Hell, she had even signed her name. La Llorona – the Weeping Woman. She had lured her to Silent Hill to scare her and tease her and feed on her fear, and then perhaps feed on her guilt.

But in the process an innocent soul, that of Lisa's mother, went free and Weeping Mary seemed the type who would more enjoy the torture of the innocent. The Innocent, even. Maybe she could only feed on the suffering of the Innocent if they had been wronged in Silent Hill itself some time in its history. Maybe for those who merely had some connection to Silent Hill – those who had vacationed there, or passed through, or lived there and later moved away, or lived and died there but who had been hurt elsewhere – she had to settle for the suffering of the guilty, meting out a punishment that trapped the guilty and freed the innocent because she couldn't ensnare them both.

Maybe there were rules to follow, and if there are, where do I fit into this, she wondered.

Maybe I'm giving things too much thought again. I need to get going.

She shook her head, and wiped a wrist across her forehead before looking up from the floor where she had been staring at nothing in particular while she mulled things over.

At the end of the hall was a single door, open now, but which was always kept closed during performances to halt any errant noises that might issue from the offices, or God forbid the bathrooms, opening onto the hall where Augusta stood. For quick costume changes, actors and actresses hurried to private booths in the wings backstage. The stage itself was actually a giant circular platform, divided down the center by a high wall. It could accommodate two sets at once and could revolve to reveal one set as another spun out of view.

She suddenly heard the familiar grind of gears as the stage beyond the door began to move. The stage and the clockwork used to turn it were both actually very old, original to the auditorium, which had been completed some time in the 1890's, and when completed, the stage had been regarded as something of a minor engineering marvel. To turn the stage a crank off to one side backstage, out of view of the audience, had to be turned by hand, and Augusta remembered sitting in her comfortably padded seat in the audience watching while actors and actresses scurried into the wings in the darkness between scenes as the gears clanked and caught the pegs underneath the stage and passed them from one to another to turn the stage and reveal the next scene's set.

So, who was turning the crank and why?

She jumped and let out a yip of surprise as someone suddenly shrieked in pain and horror and the auditorium beyond the door erupted in applause. Augusta ran toward the door; someone out there might need help. But who the hell could have been clapping? It sounded as though the auditorium was filled to capacity.

Great cloth walls of blackout curtain hung from steel rods high above on the other side of the door. Most were fuzzy with mold and moss, and one had torn away from its rings and lay on the warping floor in a heap. Sounding far away, someone on the stage was sobbing in hoarse screams.

Augusta ran to her left to skirt the blackout curtains, and her flashlight beam bounced wildly off stacked moldering set pieces in the wings – a wing chair with rusty springs bursting from its seat, a grim oil painting peeling out of its gilt frame – and the dressing booths tucked against the far wall. Most of their doors hung askew. As she ran the floor squeaked and bounced under her feet; it was hardwood and the boards had peeled up and swollen.

And then her right foot caught beneath one of the warped, bowed boards. She felt herself falling forward, saw the undulating floor rushing up to meet her, and managed to turn so that her back, and her backpack, took the force as she hit the floor. She looked at the beam of her flashlight reaching up to disappear in the blackness amid the rafters high above.

"Mother, I'm so sorry," howled the voice, that of a woman, from the stage.

From the audience came a sound that suggested it had just collectively seen something utterly adorable. A sort of sighing, "Awwww..."

"I didn't mean for this to happen," said the voice. "I didn't mean for it to end up like this."

Laughter, great gales of hysterical screaming laughter poured from the seats of the auditorium, but as it died away another voice murmured a reply to the crying woman.

Augusta rolled over, feeling boards poking at her through her shirt and jeans. Thank God I didn't land on any upturned nails or tacks, she thought, then realized there were two people on the stage, and considered perhaps she should stay hidden.

Maybe Lisa Groft and her mother were talking, and Augusta suddenly saw, perfectly clearly, that it was not her place to interrupt. It was almost as if a voice had spoken audibly, "No."

Whatever was happening on the stage was meant to play itself out without interference. She crawled backward, further into the darkness behind the ruined wing chair.

"Mother, I'm sorry. I love you, and I always did... It's – It's just that the life I lived here and the life I live now don't fit together and–"

The audience booed enthusiastically.

"SHUT UP!! SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Augusta imagined Lisa Groft spinning around, through from what she didn't know, her blond hair flying out in a golden fan, to face the seats in the auditorium, which were almost certainly empty.

There was silence for a moment, then laughter from the auditorium and helpless sobs from Lisa Groft.

"Please be quiet..." begged the voice.

More laughter. Hell with a laugh track, Augusta thought.

Helpless sobbing, then, "Please, mother, will you forgive me?"

A murmur, weak and barely there at all.

A scream that crumbled into weeping: "MOMMIEEEEEE!!"

Wild applause from the audience. Hoots and whistles and cheers.

Sudden silence broken only by Lisa Groft's weeping. Then a loud click that Augusta recognized as a spotlight being switched on, as the barest slants of light spilled over the tops of the blackout curtains and lit her hiding spot with a dim glow.

A familiar voice, and Augusta felt her head swim.

"And the award for Best Actress goes to," said Weeping Mary cheerfully, "...why, YOU, Lisa Groft! What a performance! Very impressive."

Spirited applause from the audience.

Weeping Mary's voice became a menacing growl. "Your mother may forgive you, and in fact a lot of people might forgive you, but I won't. You're here because you're damned, girl, and I'm the one who'll see to it that you're properly punished for being such a heartless, selfish, wretched, stinking cunt."

The applause grew louder.

"Come here, Lisa Groft."

A strange, gasping, high-pitched scream. "Who are you?"

"La Llorona."

Above the clapping and cheers came a sound, like high heels clicking across a stage, then a thump and a squeal, as though Lisa Groft had tried to back away, then fallen hard on her ass. A muffled scraping as though Lisa Groft were scooting backward across the floor.

Weeping Mary giggled. Her high heels clicked smartly on the floor. The audience roared its approval.

"You're in my realm now, my dear, and I rule it absolutely. It's far, far too late for you now."

A screech, and then gunshots. Perhaps Weeping Mary had removed her sunglasses. Perhaps Lisa Groft had a gun.

"COME HERE, WOMAN," Weeping Mary roared, and it shook the walls and floor. High above, dangling rusty chains and ruined banks of lights clinked lightly together. From the audience came cheers and whistles, and the applause rose and fell like waves crashing on a beach.

Lisa Groft began to scream and seemed unable to stop. Weeping Mary laughed, and then there was the sound of something large being dragged.

The laughter grew louder, and Augusta realized with horror that Weeping Mary was approaching.

"NO, NO, PLEASE, NO... OH DEAR GOD, NO, PLEASE..."the screams became words.

More applause from the audience, and a shout for an encore.

It couldn't be right to hide here. It couldn't be right to hide while Weeping Mary did... whatever... to Lisa Groft. Weeping Mary was coming closer, and Augusta switched off her flashlight, tightened her grip on her shovel, and prepared to leap out at her. If she could surprise her, maybe...

She felt an arm around her stomach, suddenly, and a delicate hand over her mouth to stifle the scream that tried to spill out. The scent of roses washed over her. Looking down, she saw a woman's hand over her mouth. Its fingers were bedecked with silver rings set with blue jewels and there was an arm in a blue denim sleeve curling away to her right.

"Be still. Be still, child," said a warm voice close by her ear. Again Augusta heard the mysterious accent she couldn't quite place. Cuban or Mexican. Something Hispanic. "She mustn't see you now. She'd kill you."

The Blue Lady spoke with the same accent as Weeping Mary.

The Blue Lady held Augusta in place, on her knees crouched behind the rotting wing chair, as Weeping Mary stalked into view, dragging Lisa Groft by the hair. She kicked and screamed and begged and cried and pleaded. Weeping Mary wore a glittering scarlet evening gown with a slit up to her thigh on the right that flashed open with every step to reveal a perfect length of toned leg and a pair of stiletto heels, blood-red to match the dress, on her feet. With every step, a puff of smoke rose from beneath her shoes as she scorched a footprint into the wooden floor. She wore a satisfied grin, and had indeed taken off her sunglasses. The blood that poured from her eye sockets matched the color of her dress exactly.

Lisa Groft wailed her terror, and Augusta squeezed her eyes shut. Apparently the Blue Lady's hair now hung free; it fell over Augusta's face in a sweet-smelling curtain. She felt the Blue Lady kiss her cheek lightly, comfortingly.

"There, there," she whispered, "Just be still until she passes by."

Augusta felt tears slip down her cheeks.

Lisa Groft's screams ceased, as did Weeping Mary's malevolent chuckling and the applause from the audience, when the door behind the hanging blackout curtains slammed loudly, violently shut. The silence was shocking, and Augusta twitched in surprise. In an instant, the sensation of the Blue Lady's hand over her mouth and arm around her stomach vanished, and Augusta leapt to her feet, hurtled forward and spun and switched on her flashlight to see that there was no one behind her. The Blue Lady was gone.

Augusta stared, blinking and feeling her breath huff out in little gasps. A single blue rose lay on the floor where she had hidden. She ignored it and ran to the door.

The knob refused to turn, and when she put her ear to the door, she heard nothing from the other side. Weeping Mary was gone, and with her, Lisa Groft. Augusta wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, then balled her fist and smeared away her tears.

There was nothing she could do.

She had to get out of here.

Augusta ran away from the door, around the curtains to the wing chair. She shone her light on the rose on the floor. The Blue Lady had her child, she remembered. She had Kitty. She was here, then gone.

Had Kitty been here? Where was she? Augusta walked forward, knelt, and picked up the blue rose. As she held it in the beam of her light and gazed at it, a feeling of peace swelled inside her, a nub that became a bud that blossomed into a magnificent flower. A blue rose, perhaps. Kitty was safe with the Blue Lady. Infinitely safer than she would be with Augusta, at least until Joseph was sealed in his tomb again, or was destroyed or burning in hell.

"Take good care of her, please, until I can come get her," she whispered and wondered if she had just said a prayer.

She stood, swung her backpack around, and unzipped it and placed the blue rose carefully inside, then shrugged it back into place and walked away with her flashlight and the faint glow from the stage, spilling over the tops of the curtains like the first rays of sunrise above the horizon, to guide her.


	24. The rotting library

Absurdly, when she stepped onto the stage, her first thoughts had not been of the hospital bed to her right, with its sheets crusted with scabs and dried shit, or to the ranks of seats in the auditorium, all of which were as deserted as she had expected. She only glanced at Lisa Groft's abandoned pistol, a Ruger .45-caliber semiautomatic, glinting meanly on the floor. Instead, she looked into the hot beam shining down from the spotlight and wondered, where is the power coming from?

Where _was_ the power coming from? Was there a power plant somewhere, where a meter measured the electricity used to power that spotlight, where the technicians couldn't trace what it was trickling away to?

Then she considered, the Little Baroness could play a piano and a calliope and plenty more by itself, and in Silent Hill the natural laws that ruled the rest of the world tyrannically had ceased to mean much. Surely in a place like this, there was electricity enough somewhere to shine a spotlight. This meant nothing.

She turned her attention to the gun, and thought: fat lot of good it did Lisa Groft. Or maybe the actress had simply been a terrible shot. Augusta was not, and the thought of carefully aiming, pulling the trigger, and watching the top of Weeping Mary's head take flight brought a smile to her face. Of course, it was more complicated than that. It had to be, and for all she knew, bullets might just bounce off Weeping Mary or worse, she could catch them all, flick her wrist, and send them rocketing back toward Augusta.

Then again, a gun might be useful against Joseph, or against any more of the foot soldiers in Weeping Mary's army.

But then again, using a gun abandoned by a damned, and now probably dead, woman seemed like stripping a corpse of a fine outfit and wearing it out of the funeral chapel.

Then again a lot of things. There was a gun on the floor, hers for the taking. It was powerful – shoot something with a .45-caliber bullet, especially a hollowpoint bullet, and chances were good whatever had been shot would not be feeling chipper again any time soon. She walked to the gun and stooped to pick it up.

Hadn't the man who had lain on the sofa at the Ridgeview Clinic had a gun? Of course – he'd been aiming it at her when she first met him. What had happened to it? He'd left it on the stairwell floor, she remembered, when she hefted him to his feet and they had staggered away through the door and down the darkened hall.

She stood and stared at the gun in her hand for a moment, wondering where she could keep it but not send a bullet screaming through her body should she stumble and fall or be knocked down again.

Maybe she could find a holster somewhere once she made her way outside again. And bullets. Hollowpoint bullets. Until then...

Her pockets were empty because her wallet was in her backpack. She pushed the safety pin and slipped the gun, barrel-first, carefully into her pocket, then walked down the stairs from the stage to the orchestra pit. The auditorium was silent now, and her footsteps on the warped wooden risers echoed and re-echoed.

Beyond the beam of the spotlight, she switched on her flashlight. The tall windows pointing skyward like those of a cathedral were shuttered to blot out the light from outside. They always were – always had been – whenever a performance was in progress. She marveled at the ruined seats in her light. Springs had burst through fabric that had blackened and frayed. Several seats hosted healthy crops of mushrooms, and others had grown a fur of moss. Some appeared to have become nests for mice and other animals. On the floor near one seat lay what had been a bird. Long dead, its bones poked up through a putrid mound of old feathers.

Augusta wanted to be somewhere else. She let her light guide her to the doors at the back of the theater, and when she pushed them open they howled on rusty hinges. She cringed, and looked behind her quickly but the auditorium was quiet and black and decaying peacefully.

She left it behind and tracked clean footprints through the dust and filth on the lobby's vast marble floor, patterned with black-and-white checkerboard tile. Here the light from outside filtered half-heartedly through dirty windows, and fancy sofas and settees sagged and mildewed in shadows. A giant chandelier, its brass tarnished and its crystal pendants dulled by dust, dangled above, suspended from a long chain in a mirrored dome where most of the panels were still intact. Two or three had crashed to the floor at some point, however, and Augusta stepped around their shards, scattered across the great central circle of white marble where the tiles were inset with colored marble letters:

LET THE MAGIC OF THE STAGE SING TO YOUR SOUL

She thought, and didn't know why, that those had probably been the last words to ever cross Lisa Groft's mind. Or would be if she wasn't already dead.

The door here squealed open, and Augusta switched off her light as she stepped out to stand again in the watery, misty light where the snowflakes fell and melted. Ahead Burke Square was lost in the fog, though she thought she could see a shape that was probably the fountain in its center.

A cast iron fountain she remembered, with three tiers, each smaller and higher up than that beneath, and a statue of a woman balanced on the ball of one foot, her other leg kicked out behind her, at the top. One arm was raised above her head, and in her hand she held a torch that had always glowed beautifully at night with a stained glass flame. Her other hand was held to her face, a finger raised to her lips in a shushing gesture.

Or, if viewed from the wrong angle, raised as if she were preparing to pick her nose. Either way, it had been a monument to some Prohibition-era mayor's notion of whimsy, and the tourists loved it. Had loved it, and so had the citizens of Silent Hill, who nicknamed the shushing iron lady "Silent Hilda." Augusta closed the door quietly behind her and walked down the wide brick steps, grown mossy over the years, to the sidewalk. There were trees in Burke Square, tall poplars clustered in groves at each corner that were black in the dampness. She wondered if they were dead. Silent Hill City Hall, a Victorian brick riot of towers, dormers, and turrets, spread its complicated facade along the west face of the square, while to the north was the art deco First Baptist Church with its dome and cupola that had together looked uncannily like a breast when viewed from afar. To the east, Silent Hill First Methodist Church faced off across the square with city hall, and looked like a grand Greek temple of yellow brick and tall white marble columns.

Staring into the fog as the snowflakes fell softly, she looked at First Baptist, which was nothing more than a vague dark shape in the distance, and realized, this is where I went to church.

It would be nice to go inside and pray until things made sense, she thought, but she didn't have the time. Weeping Mary wanted to torture her, and her only chance to survive or maybe even fight lay in the library. She had to learn more about Weeping Mary and her cult, and she had to learn more about the monsters of her army who had spilled Innocent blood all over this town. Know thine enemy.

Who had said that? She couldn't remember. Burke Square slowly fell behind, then disappeared altogether in the mist as she walked along Massey Street, heading east. The Methodist church pursued her for a block and then gave up the chase, while on her side of the street she passed by what appeared to be a row of professional offices. Several lawyers, plus one architectural firm for variety. At the intersection of Massey Street and Glover Avenue, with the back of the church stretching away up Glover to her left, Summerland Cemetery appeared ahead on her right, spreading east along the south side of Massey Street all the way down to the Illiniwak River. She couldn't suppress a shudder. The fence was still curtained with dead vines.

Why wouldn't it be? Glover Avenue ran northward, and on the far side across from the church were shops in a line of low brick buildings. Shredded awnings sagged from their frames and there was a pair of flags, the American and Illinois state flags, faded and washed-out, hanging sodden from poles that jutted out near the roof of the corner building.

She wondered if she might find a sporting goods shop or an army surplus store as she crossed the street. Some place where there would be bullets for the gun. Signs drifted out of the mist – The Teddy Bear Caboose. Olden Days Doll Emporium. Magic Loom Quilts and Rugs. A café or coffeehouse – it was hard to tell which – called Comfort Food.

She sighed. No bullets here, and so she walked on, but crossed the street because she absolutely did not want to walk on the same side of Massey Street as Summerland Cemetery.

The shops to her left were a solid wall. Their windows were smeared, dirty, or opaque with moisture condensed on the glass. Some of the stores had set stone planters by their doors, and though Augusta supposed they had once been filled with flowers, most now overflowed with weeds.

At the next intersection it seemed the land fell away and the Massey Street Bridge flung itself into space. To the right the cemetery continued down to the riverfront, and to the left was Silent Hill's main library, a grey stone manor on a squat bluff overlooking the Illiniwak.

The feeling of emptiness was overwhelming, though at last there was a sound to break the silence – the Illiniwak River slapping sedately in its banks as it flowed on to the lake. On a clear day the river would have been a solid field of dancing diamond sparkles, with the riverside park a green streak on the far side and the buildings of East Silent Hill's commercial street standing at attention in a line behind that.

She crossed Denyer Avenue, which ran north from Massey Street in front of the library.

THE CENTRAL LIBRARY OF THE CITY OF SILENT HILL was carved on the arch above the great double doors, and an elegant pair of lampposts, each with six white globes, stood to either side in a narrow strip of land running along the front of the building. Holly bushes planted along the front had run riot and bulged out over the sidewalk, shoving one another aside and fighting for space. Their green bulk mostly hid the first floor windows, which were square. The second floor windows were tall and rectangular and those in a row along the third floor were tall and arched, and a wide and very tall window divided the building in half, rising from just above the arch over the door to just beneath the roofline.

The copper mansard roof, pierced at intervals by dormers shielding round windows like beady eyes, had long ago turned green and the green had run in streaks down the gray marble walls. At each corner of the roof copper eagles spread their wings and above each arched window on the third floor marble faces peered from keystones, staring with carved eyes at nothing.

The doors were sheathed in copper as green as the roof, studded with rosettes, panels inset into panels, and when Augusta grabbed their handles and pulled, she at first thought they must be locked. Then they gave a little, and a little more, and finally burst open with a shriek that must have echoed all over town.

"Damn it!" she whispered, then jumped inside and wrestled the doors closed again. At some point a deadbolt had been installed and she turned it to lock the doors, and felt a little better.

Back into the quiet, she thought, and already missed the sound of the river. But the feeling of space had followed her inside. Three stories above, the odd snowflake made its way into the library through holes punched in a great glass dome. Augusta looked up and wondered what could possibly have broken the glass. She followed a snowflake down, past the third and second floors, each ringed with columns and iron railings, and watched it melt on the floor, where the tiles, in red, brown, black, and cream, formed a sunburst pattern with a thousand rays.

She looked to her left and saw the old wood checkout desk, swollen, warped, and splintered. A stack of books left behind there five years ago had ballooned in size from constant moisture and had grown mossy. To her right was the check-in desk where patrons returned their books, and more books lay scattered there, all of them mossy, fat, and ruined.

Crap, she thought, put her palm to her forehead, and wondered if everything in the library was ruined. Every breath she took smelled of rotting paper, mold, and mildew.

Maybe, the further away from the spot where the moisture leaked in, the better the books would be preserved. Plus, she realized, most of the information she would need would be set aside in the Illinois Room or the Toluca Room, where books of local history were kept. Or, the books she needed might have been put into the library vault, where rare and historic items in the collection were sealed away.

If the doors to the Illinois Room and Toluca Room had remained closed and undamaged, the books inside might be in much better condition than those in the rest of the library. It could be as simple as that.

When she stepped forward, the echo of her footsteps sang off the iron railings above her, and off of the iron staircase spiraling upward straight ahead.

A lovely building. One of many in a town that made its livelihood from being lovely. A gift from a rich person long dead, like most of the civic buildings not only in Silent Hill, but in all of Toluca County. There had been no better place in all of Silent Hill to spend a rainy day.

Moss grew on the books. Most were green with mold. The shelves had once been made of oak or some other noble wood, Augusta supposed, but at some point they were replaced with steel bookcases painted a bland grey – rust had blossomed everywhere. Several of the floor tiles had cracked, and wherever a tile had shattered, water puddled.

How many books had been in the town library system? Just over a quarter-million. The city had been proud of that fact, and advertised it in the brochures they printed up for the tourists. The vast majority had resided here at the main branch, while the other two branches had tended to only stock the most popular books.

Past a bank of shelves was a study area with wooden tables and chairs in orderly rows, though a shelf to her right had toppled and now rested against one of the tables at an odd angle. Its cargo of books moldered on the floor. The light from the window and glass dome had faded away this far back into the ranks of shelves, and Augusta switched on her flashlight, which was still slung over her shoulder on its strap.

The library was rotting and it broke her heart.

At the rear of the library, beyond the study area and beyond row upon row of shelves stood a long table with a line of ruined computers and twelve chairs on each side. The reference desk lay behind, in front of windows that showed a view of rolling mist. The Illinois Room lay to the left, while the Toluca Room was to the right, both buried in their corners against the back wall of the building. Their doors were closed.

August smiled.

Until she saw the Illinois Room. She had chosen it first, walked to its door and peered inside through the large glass panel set into the old wooden door. A window in the Illinois Room had shattered, and had been broken long enough to allow vines and plants from outside to come in. The walls were wrapped in vines, and moss and a green slime that must be algae coated every surface not hidden by leaves. A bush, though she couldn't be sure what kind, had taken root in one corner where a shelf appeared to have collapsed and spilled its books to the floor. She thought it might be an azalea, and if the seasons still held sway in Silent Hill, it would sprout a thousand bright new leaves to complement its dull old ones in the next week or two, and would bloom in late June.

The Toluca Room looked much better. Through the glass set into the door, it looked dusty but untouched. She tried the knob and it turned easily. The Toluca Room was smaller than the Illinois Room, wide enough to accommodate one window to the right and two along the back wall. Augusta stepped inside and closed the door behind her. It couldn't be locked, she discovered, and feeling of unease came and went in an instant.

Old wooden bookcases fronted with closed glass doors stood along the left wall, but just to her left was a counter with three microfiche machines and three chairs collecting dust. A waist-high bookshelf ran along the far wall under the windows and along the wall to the right. Dead houseplants in pots had mummified in front of every window, sitting atop the low shelves. A round table with four chairs filled the center of the room, and Augusta wondered at the research that must have been conducted there.

She turned, then stopped to stare at a large laminated map of Silent Hill tacked to the wall above the microfiche readers. South Vale, Paleville, South Park, Old Silent Hill, Wrightwood, downtown, the Windowbox District, East Silent Hill...

She looked at parks and cemeteries marked in green. The largest were Jesperson Park downtown, Yorkshire Park along the lakefront in East Silent Hill and Midwich Park on the south side of Old Silent Hill, running along the west side of Bachman Road until Old Silent Hill gave way to South Park. Then came Rosewater Park in South Vale and Settlers Park, bisected by I-55, holding at bay the tangled streets of Wrightwood, which looked like a dozen spider webs haphazardly strung together, from the tiny but orderly grid of Old Silent Hill. There was Silent Hill Wetlands Gardens sandwiched between downtown and the Windowbox District, spreading up from the Toluca riverside to the elbow where the grid of the Windowbox District met the streets of the north side of downtown, which ran at forty-five degree angles. There were the orderly squares, nine of them, of East Silent Hill, where the Victorian mansions looked down into green oases modeled on the famous squares of Savannah, Georgia.

There were the narrow bands of green along every riverside, where the greenways ran and could be reached by staircases leading down from every bridge in town. Jesperson Park bled into the Wetlands Gardens by way of a greenway. There was Lakeside Amusement Park, a gigantic swath of green in the Paleville neighborhood.

There was Summerland Cemetery on the south side of downtown, and Springwood Cemetery, where members of Silent Hill's Jewish community were laid to rest, on the north side of the Windowbox District, separated by only a few blocks from the national park. There was Swan Point Cemetery (formerly the Colored and Indigents Burial Ground) on the northern edge of Wrightwood, where the poorer people had always lived anyway. It was not located on a point and was not especially a haunt for swans, but it was separated from Paleville National Park by nothing more than the width of Shelley Road.

Augusta looked at the map and was flooded by memories. She thought of her favorite stores, including J. Porter and Sons' Candy Kingdom in South Vale, and Just Cats, on Crichton Street beside the main post office downtown, and the boutique in East Silent Hill that sold the only comfortable pairs of high-heeled shoes she had ever found, along with a damn nice matching bag.

She thought of her favorite restaurants, and of leading tours of Summerland Cemetery while the tourists snapped photos and asked her questions ranging from thought-provoking to ludicrous. She thought of the rainy days she had spent in this library, and of checking out books while rain pattered and ran in patterns down the glass dome above. She thought of the Wetlands Gardens in the spring, and how they seemed to come to life overnight. She thought of the Veterans Memorial Gardens in Yorkshire Park, with their carpets of flowers planted in patterns and sometimes even words – PEACE in white daisies against a background of scarlet poppies.

She thought of strolling through the squares of East Silent Hill and of how, as much as she loved the brownstone she shared with Joseph, she still liked to pretend she lived in one of the fairytale castles with their turrets topped with copper weathervanes and their eaves and porches trimmed with awesomely intricately carved gingerbread. She thought of going to church each Sunday as often with Joseph as without at First Baptist Church, and of ascending the steps while bells rang out in the cupola that looked, from afar, like the nipple of a colossal breast.

And suddenly she hated Weeping Mary more than ever. It was bad enough to lose a place as special as Silent Hill. It was like swallowing bleach, in fact, she thought, in that it burned a hollow place inside, and then kept burning. But for a monster called Weeping Mary to have been here all along, to have listened to the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Bell pealing mournfully out over Toluca Lake, and to have skulked in shadows watching hungrily as children gathered to listen to the Fairytale Music Box at the Lake View Hotel... To have been here watching, and feeding, as generation after generation of residents and tourists came and went and laughed and cried and ate and shat and slept and made love and celebrated Christmas and went to church and went to work...

Augusta realized she was clenching her teeth so hard her jaw felt as if it might crack, and that she had balled her left fist hard enough to drive her nails into her palm. Her right hand was curled so tightly around the shovel handle her fingers were cramping. She HATED Weeping Mary, who had never, ever, _ever _deserved to set foot in this beautiful place when it was alive and sure as a sizzling fuck didn't deserve to be here now that it was dead.

Now that it was dead, Silent Hill should be allowed to rest in peace, she thought, and wanted to burst into tears. She fought it down, and felt something throb in her scalp under her hair, and wondered if this was how it felt to have a stroke.

Glass exploded behind her and she screamed as she spun around, bringing the shovel up to swing it, in time to see a book hurtle across the room. It rose in an arc that crested just beneath the ceiling, then hit the table in the middle of the room with a smack like the slam of a door. It had come from one of the shelves on the left side of the room, and the shattered glass door swung out and slammed against the neighboring bookcase, then fell of its hinges and hit the floor with a crunch. The door it had struck now had a crack running up and down its length of glass pane.

The next book burst out from another shelf behind glass and sent a jet of glittering splinters whickering through the air. The book rose, then fell, and hit the table with the same loud bang as the first.

The first book's cover had flown open and its pages were turning. As she watched the second book fell open and the pages began to turn.

The third book blew open the doors of another bookcase and the fourth flew out of a shelf beneath a window. Their covers opened and their pages turned.

The doors of every bookshelf to her left began to flap open and closed, slamming against each other until the glass had burst from every frame and the frames themselves were splintering and shaking apart in pieces. The potted plants atop the shelves beneath the windows hurtled toward one another, collided, and exploded in gouts of dry dirt, dead leaves, and shards of their ceramic pots. Every book burst out of a set of shelves beneath a window and tumbled over themselves across the floor while the brass light fixture hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room bounced up and down on its chain until it snapped and the whole thing crashed to the table below.

One of the microfiche machines on the counter behind her surged forward trailing a severed electrical cord, tipped, and fell to the floor with an almost resigned-sounding crash. At the table in the center of the room, and at the counter where the microfiche machines sat, chairs slid out and slammed back under as though someone were pulling them out and kicking them back into place.

The large map of Silent Hill popped free of its tacks and peeled away from the wall with a crackle of plastic, and fell over Augusta like cold, stiff cowl. She shrieked and spun away from it and nearly tripped and fell before she remembered the glass on the floor and the gun in her pocket and jabbed the shovel down like a spear into the floor. She held onto it while her feet tried to shoot out from beneath her and while trying to keep her balance, she found herself crazily thinking of those strippers who took off their clothes while clinging to a stainless steel pole.

There had been a strip club in South Vale, her mind helpfully supplied. Heaven's Night, on Carroll Street. Joseph had liked to go there.

She lost her fight to stay on her feet and sank to one knee into the broken glass on the floor. At the sound of the crunch, she realized the rest of the room had fallen still. Whatever had just happened, it was over.

And then she realized she could hear, and feel, her heart slamming in her chest. It drummed in her ears with every beat.


	25. The Captive of Pain

Augusta stood, wide-eyed and shivering and feeling the sweat that had misted at her hairline. What just happened? Why?

Staring at the ruin around her, she flinched at the sound of glass crunching underfoot as she eased the gun from her pocket. The safety pin hadn't budged – a good thing. But, a holster; she would definitely have to find a holster, either that or make one. The next time she hit the ground the gun might errantly take off her kneecap.

She realized she didn't know how many bullets were left. Maybe there were none left and the gun wouldn't take off her kneecap after all if she fell down again. And maybe there were none left and something nasty would be undeterred by the shovel and shamble up to take a bite out of her.

The clip popped out, and she inspected it and saw four bullets left, which meant there was room for three more. As easily, the clip popped back in, and she very carefully double-checked the safety and slid it back into her pocket. Must find holster – the gun was supposed to help her feel more secure, not more nervous.

She was surprised the windows hadn't shattered and let the fog from outside pour in, she thought, and inspected her knee and was pleased to see the shattered glass hadn't torn a hole in her jeans. Then she looked at the table in the center of the room, with the mangled brass light fixture and its snapped chain lying like an exotic spider, dead with its legs curled and dried.

The four books had landed like the cardinal directions of a compass, one at each head of the table. The nearest was heavy in her hands as she picked it up to inspect a passage inside highlighted with neon-blue marker.

_There is no religion that has remained unchanged from the moment it was founded. This one is no exception. When the religion fell into the hands of immigrants, it was deeply influenced by their own original Christian beliefs. For example, the traditional representations of these primal gods may be given the names and descriptions of Christian angels. Thus shared characteristics begin to appear. (There is also one rare example of the chief deity, 'Creator of Paradise' or 'Lord of Serpents and Reeds', being dubbed with a demon's name. Of course, this was not done by believers but by their opponents.) _

She glanced at the top of the page to read the title in tiny print beside every page number.

_Silent Hill's Ancient Gods: A Study of their Etymology and Evolution_

A mouthful of a title if there ever was one, she thought and began to flip through the book, which smelled peppery and old. Nothing was highlighted on any page before the first entry marked in blue. Throughout the rest of the book, though, were marked lines and entire paragraphs, and August read them all.

And she learned.

The religion later coalesced under the moniker of the Order began in the region of the world later coalesced under the moniker of the Middle East, at roughly the same time the first true pharaoh ascended the throne. It worshiped an obscure goddess of water who demanded sacrifice and suffering as tribute to prove her followers worthy of her release of the life-giving rains and cooling mists.

The goddess was called _Uwedolisdi-Ageya_, which translated very loosely as the "Sad Woman."

Augusta stopped and was suddenly very aware of the pressing silence of the library, and felt as though someone was watching. And speak of the devil and up she jumps, her mind contributed cheerfully. She shot a look at the windows and saw nothing but the mist outside. There was no one behind her and nothing looking in at the door with its large glass panel.

It felt as though something was stirring. She had felt it before, as though there was always something crawling and chewing its path just beneath Silent Hill's diseased skin. It could pop through at any moment. She realized she had felt it since she had awoken on the wrong side of the grate in Wiltse Hill Tunnel. It was the essence of everything that was wrong in this place now, she thought.

Please keep me safe. A quick prayer, and she read on.

The Sad Woman drank blood and dined on flesh –

_...the statement of which is likely merely a metaphor describing an almost "vampiric" creature that fed on pain and suffering..._

–and would not accept the sacrifice of an animal, as only her followers' self-sacrifice would prove true devotion. The religion was led by women and every seven years the high priestess was required to produce a child...

_...and that child was designated the "Ehisdv-Uhutsi" which literally translates as the "Captive of Pain"..._

...and that child was proclaimed the holiest of holies and favorite of the goddess, who gave life with her gifts of water and mist.

The Captive of Pain was then tortured –

–_very carefully so as to remain alive through every abuse for the next seven years–_

– for the next seven years of his or her life. At the end of the seven years the child was sacrificed, hung by the ankles over the "Ivory Tabernacle," which was built from the bones of all the children that had come before, and disemboweled with a copper dagger.

And at the end of this "Red Ceremony" the next Captive of Pain was presented to the people, and the cycle began again.

_It would appear the Sad Woman found the suffering of young children especially delectable, and only children between infancy and seven years of age were considered pure enough. For seven years of constant torture the goddess would partake of their pain and in essence use them up before discarding them in a final "blaze of glory," so to speak._

The high priestess kept a harem of the healthiest and most beautiful men of the people, with which she produced the Captives of Pain.

_...and during the years of imprisonment of the Captive of Pain, the men of the harem were required to have intercourse with the Captive daily, regardless of the child's age or whether the child was male or female. If at any time during the captivity a girl-child conceived, it was considered a portent that the goddess herself was preparing to enter the world, and that the end of the world was drawing near. Ancient texts record that conception was a fairly common occurrence, though amazingly, never once did a conception result in a birth._

Augusta's hands had gone ice-cold. Weeping Mary fed upon pain and suffering and once upon a time she ruled a people who willingly provided her with a child to devour every seven years. How had something this horrible – how had something so very, very _wrong_ – survived the ages? How had it survived long enough to cross oceans and then ford rivers she herself had crossed on planes and buses and in cars? How had it survived long enough to build a home for itself in cities she had visited and a town she had lived in?

How had something so awful and exotic and ancient survived long enough to spread its poison to places that were familiar and modern?

_With the sustaining blessing of abundant water assured by their sacrifices, the followers of Uwedolisdi-Ageya_ _were a stable farming people in a region of nomads and as such began to build a reputation as merchants, as numerous nomadic tribes passed through and by their lands, trading for the goods of the "Uwedolisdites" and later trading for the goods of other tribes which had already come and passed on._

_It was this prosperity that later drew the attacks of other established peoples in the region now known as Iraq, and the Uwedolisdites were at last driven from their ancestral homeland. _

And over the next thousand years, near-constant attacks drove them further and further west until an entire people had been reduced to a tiny cult living as roaming gypsies in the Europe of the Roman Empire.

_The Uwedolisdites – who appear in ancient Roman writings as the "Gravae" or "Those who Inflict Pain" – had shrunk in number to the point they could no longer sustain their goddess' incessant need for her food that was the suffering of children. And thus it was deemed necessary to prey upon the young of any community they passed through or settled in._

She read on. Here and there, it seemed entire pages had been marked in blue. Augusta learned the Gravae persisted through and after the downfall of the Romans and wandered the continent and crossed the English Channel to Britain as outcasts until finally claiming as their own the abandoned Welsh village of Pentref Diflanedig, which had been completely depopulated by the Black Plague.

And at last, with a home to call its own again, the Gravae, now known as the Order – the Welsh word for which Augusta couldn't being to pronounce – flourished for almost three and a half centuries. Their reputation grew and terrified the villages and towns of the surrounding countryside, where it became common practice to never allow children to venture out after dark. Word spread that the Order worshiped a demon, Samael, who was responsible for their prosperity and who would protect what was his, and even the English monarchy was wary of launching an attempt to destroy them.

Until the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745 provided a convenient excuse for their exile from the British Isles. They were accused of disloyalty to King George II, and banished to Canada.

They arrived in Nova Scotia in 1746, only to be purged with the French Acadians to Louisiana in 1765.

And the Order remained in New Orleans, practicing its magic and appeasing the Sad Woman until January of 1815, when the Battle of New Orleans, last in the War of 1812, occurred and the magicians of the city finally rose up to drive them out, cursing them for the city's unusually large share of misfortune, including its attempted capture by the British in the battle.

_...No one honestly blamed the members of the Order for bringing the Battle of New Orleans to their city, as the town was a vital port and it was only to be expected the British and American forces would clash there. However, it had always seemed that misfortune swirled around the Order like a dark cloud and it couldn't be denied that in the parts of town they were known to frequent, people disappeared more often and people died more often and people got sick much more often than elsewhere in the region – even in a city prone to epidemics and fevers, slave uprisings, and crime of all kinds. Also, it could not be argued that the great fire of 1788, which destroyed 865 buildings, and that of 1794, which destroyed 212 structures, had both begun in the quarter where the followers of the Order lived..._

And so the exodus began northward, denied a home everywhere until their eventual arrival in a soggy new county where misfits and outcasts went to be left alone by the rest of the world. The Order made itself at home, partook of the White Claudia flowers that had figured so heavily in the ceremonies of the Toluca Indians, reduced to that single withered old man in his cabin, and built themselves a village where before there had only been scattered farms and ragged huts, and the impenetrable Paleville Estate.

And Silent Hill was born. Then came the circuit-rider preachers, then came the tourists, then came the merchants... And all the while the Sad Woman feasted on pain and suffering while the town grew and grew. There was always plenty to feed upon. She made sure of it herself. Perhaps, when an abusive husband had meant only to berate his wife with words, the Sad Woman whispered in his ear to encourage him to use his fists instead. And perhaps, when an awkward and gawky freshman at Silent Hill High School walked past a group of mean and muscled football players in the cafeteria, she suggested every so gently that instead of snickering to themselves, they ought to make a vicious comment just loudly enough for others to hear. Or better yet, shoot out a foot and send the freshman sprawling and humiliated and splattered with what was to have been his lunch, to the floor. You'll get extra points if you can make him break his glasses or chip a tooth.

Instead of scowl, scream. Instead of scream, slap. Instead of slap, hit. Instead of hit, kill. It would make the Sad Woman happy if you would.

It would make Weeping Mary grin. She might even take off her sunglasses and cry tears of joy.

There was more. Augusta set the book on the table because she didn't want to hold it any more. It felt as though the cover had sprouted a cobble of pus-filled blisters under her fingers. She reached down to turn the pages and learned that over the time, through constant exposure to the pervasive Christianity of Europe and the New World, the Order had adapted its theology. Rather than suffering for the nourishment of the goddess, the suffering's intent had become a way to awaken a sleeping god in hopes she would see the plight of the earth, take pity, and bring about Paradise.

Augusta knew better. Weeping Mary was very much awake, and enjoyed agony for no other reason than that it fed her and she found it amusing.

More still. Even the last chapters of the book were marked with blue. It seemed the misfortunes of New Orleans had followed the Order even to their new home in Illinois. Even though mosquitoes were never to be found where White Claudia grew, fevers and epidemics still struck now and again. Not nearly as often as elsewhere, but still they struck. Cholera, yellow fever, scarlet fever, smallpox, tuberculosis, polio, and a host of obscure birth defects. The largest outbreak was of yellow fever in 1880, which was severe enough to warrant the founding of Brookhaven Hospital in South Vale, which had later been converted into a mental hospital that served all of Toluca County. But, then came scarlet fever in 1883, which supposedly carried off the last handful of followers of the Order...

_...and their strange, cruel god and all her angels and subordinates._

It did no such thing. Weeping Mary/the Sad Woman/Samael was alive and well and feeding. She didn't need a congregation in the town where she had built her nest.

Augusta moved on to the next book. It too had fallen open to a page with a passage highlighted in blue. She stopped, looking down at the open pages and holding her hands out as if to ward off the book should it suddenly leap up snapping at her. An illustration, a drawing, was circled in blue and she had seen that drawing before.

A circle with triangles inside and unreadable letters of an alphabet no one used anymore.

She had seen it aboard the Little Baroness, in one of the ever-changing paintings in the dining saloon, and for a moment she had also watched it burn itself onto the door of the oven in the ship's kitchen.

She read the marked paragraph.

_This magic square, with strong protective and dispelling properties, is called the 'Virun VII crest' or the 'Seal of Metatron'. It will bring results regardless of whether the target is good or evil; its strength, therefore, places a very high burden on the caster. As it is also difficult to control, it is not usually used. This is why it bears the name 'Metatron' after the angel Metatron (or Metratron) also known as the Agent of God. _

The book was called _Laws of Other Worlds _and when Augusta picked it up and flipped through it, she saw that nothing else in the book had been marked in blue, so she laid it down on the table again.

The Seal of Metatron. The difficult-to-use and difficult-to-control crest of the most powerful of the archangels. What did that mean? She already knew Weeping Mary was a demon, perhaps even the "Samael" mentioned in the other book, and that the Blue Lady was an angel. Metatron? A being that powerful?

Did Metatron wear blue roses in her hair? Had she held her hand over Augusta's mouth as a demon called Samael walked past, dragging a famous actress to her death? Was Kitty in Metatron's care?

Augusta tore out the page with the seal drawn on it and circled in blue, folded it carefully, and slipped it into the pocket not occupied by a gun that should have been in a holster. It seemed like a good idea to have it along, she thought.

No, it seemed like an extraordinarily good idea, she realized, and moved on to the third book.

_A Million Truths: The Story of Religion in America_

Most of a page was marked.

_One characteristic, mentioned only in rare documents and dying out in the modern age, is that of the ritual sacrifice. One sect which placed an especially high premium on the sacrifice of self was known as the Order, whose American presence can be traced to New Orleans circa 1765 and later to the small town of Silent Hill, Illinois starting in 1815 and ending in 1883, when the last of this dwindling faith's members died in an outbreak of scarlet fever. _

_One particular passage from this faith's scriptures graphically illustrates the lengths to which the Order's members were willing to go to atone for grievous sins of individuals as well as of the people as a whole._

_"Offering prayers, pierce a man's chest with a copper stake. Drench the altar in the blood which spouts red from the heart, to praise and to show loyalty unto God." _

_In another sacrificial rite mentioned in the same book, the victim is burned alive. This was a more dignified ceremony in which prisoners and sinners were not allowed to participate. Only the clergy could be sacrificed in a ritual meant to purge the sins of an entire people fallen out of favor with God. Similar to the burning at the stake, understandably no comparable rite can be found in any of the alternative religions practiced nearby. While some may speculate it may have some connection with the main deity being a sun god, a more detailed look into this faith's beliefs reveal that originally the primary god was a deity of water. _

_Even though this religion extols redemption, it brings to mind a dark and cultish history. Though the Order was very heavily influenced by its exposure to Christianity and Judaism over the years, it obviously failed to completely rise above its bloody roots._

No kidding.

The fourth book lay open to what looked like a timeline, beneath the title _A Record of Crime and Punishment in Toluca County, 1890-1900_. Beside the title of the book was the title of the section – _Tables of Violent Crimes by Township._

This book had rocketed out from a shelf beneath a window, and glancing toward its empty spot in the row of books still packed in place there, she saw a volume for every decade. Each book was very large, as though there had been an unsettling number of crimes to record each decade.

Of course there had been. Weeping Mary had seen to that, especially in Silent Hill.

_January 1, 1890 – Shooting with death resultant, Stevenson Lane, Wrightwood_

_January 1, 1890 – Shooting with death resultant, Gacy Street, East Silent Hill_

_January 1, 1890 – Shooting with death resultant, Weaver Street, South Park_

Drunks with guns on New Year's Day.

_January 3, 1890 – Stabbing with death not resultant, Carroll Street, South Vale_

_January 7, 1890 – Poisoning with death resultant, St. Germain Avenue, North Silent Hill_

_January 19, 1890 – Shooting with death not resultant, Crowley Street, North Silent Hill_

_January 27, 1890 – Beating with death not resultant, Nathan Avenue, South Vale_

_January 28, 1890 – Beating with death not resultant, Neely Street, South Vale_

_January 31, 1890 – Beating with death resultant, Neely Steet, South Vale_

Three deadly shootings, and one fatal poisoning and beating each, plus a non-fatal stabbing, a non-fatal shooting, and two non-fatal beating – in one month. In a town that, at the time, had probably been home to no more than five or six thousand people.

And God only knew how many beaten wives and children there had been during that time, because those things simply weren't talked about then, not in polite company.

No one died in February, March, or April, but there were beatings, an "assault on a female,"which almost certainly meant rape, and shootings.

May featured an "assault with a hatchet" resultant in death on Dodd Lane in Wrightwood, and June brought an unusually large number of assaults, while a rash of "assault on a female" entries pocked July, August, and September.

Every month of 1890 brought violence and misery, Augusta saw, as did every month of 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894...

The crime rate of Silent Hill was astronomical, and Augusta knew that if she thumbed through the book for 1900-1910, or 1910-20, or 1980-1990, she would find the same records. In fact, there would probably be even more to record in the newer volumes because at some point it had become all the rage to bring the police into the matters of child abuse and wife beating.

Augusta remembered – Toluca County had long borne the stigma of the worst rates of child abuse and spousal abuse in Illinois. Worse than Cook County, home to Chicago. Worse than St. Clair County, home to East St. Louis, among the most notorious slums in the country. Worse than any number of depressed Illinois counties home to depressed cities and towns where depressed people reeled with the loss of thousands of industrial jobs. Every year the county maintained its dubious status, the Toluca Tribune launched a hand-wringing expose always crowned with editorials begging abused wives, and husbands, to seek help and informing children that, no, it was not okay for daddy to hit you or for mommy to stub her cigarettes out on your shoulder.

Oddly, it wasn't that all of Toluca County was beating its husbands with hammers and molesting its children in unusually high numbers. Only Silent Hill Township, the westernmost parts of Pleasant River Township, and the easternmost of Brahms – the sections of those townships which bordered Silent Hill.

Augusta didn't want to check the statistics for Brahms, Pleasant River, Ashfield or South Ashfield townships, but knew that if she did, she would find crime rates that were likely half that of Silent Hill, or even less.

How had it escaped notice? It hadn't, she supposed. However Silent Hill had always been the wildest town in Toluca, and a little more crime was only to be expected there. When Prohibition had closed all the bars in Brahms and forced the fancy restaurants in Ashfield to serve iced tea, booze could be bought in the saloons and fine dining rooms of Silent Hill as easily as before. No one cared.

When the mobsters of Chicago had vacationed in Toluca County (when they weren't partaking of the healing waters of Hot Springs, Arkansas that is), and eschewed the resorts of Ashfield, South Ashfield, Brahms, and Pleasant River for the Lake View Hotel or that palace in East Silent Hill, the Hotel Iroquois, no one thought it odd.

When the governments of Ashfield and South Ashfield decided to drive prostitution out of their towns in the 1950's, and the prostitutes simply packed up, moved to Silent Hill, spread their legs and kept satisfying customers as if nothing had ever happened, no one was unduly upset – it was more convenient for the tourists who liked that sort of thing anyway. The charms of the rest of the county were typically more readily enjoyed by a higher class of people.

Know thine enemy. Augusta knew her now.

She looked up with a startled huff of air as she suddenly heard pages flipping. The book, _Laws of Other Worlds_, she saw, as she walked to it and stared down at it.

When the pages stilled, the same bright blue ink she had seen in every one of the books began to bleed through the paper, marking nearly everything printed on page 394.

_In areas suspected of being home to unusually high concentrations of "otherworldly" energies or a particularly powerful supernatural being, it is not at all unusual to find that supernatural events take place with high frequency or regularity._

_Take the case of the small town of Silent Hill, surrounded on three sides by Paleville National Park in the high hills of central Illinois. The town is located in Toluca County, named for a now- vanished tribe of Native Americans who recognized the site where the city now stands as an area of extraordinary spiritual energy. In fact, the town takes its name from this recognition, in that the area was supposedly so spiritually powerful that the spirits of the area themselves were forever silent with reverential awe._

_The city of Silent Hill, while a thriving resort and center for commerce, nevertheless records a very high number of fascinating seemingly-supernatural phenomena. One such incident is that of the Little Baroness, an excursion boat carrying fourteen tourists and crew that sailed into a foggy November day in 1918 and simply vanished. No trace was ever found of the ship or its passengers, and newspapers of the day could only conclude that "it most likely sunk for some reason."_

No, it hadn't sunk for some reason, Augusta thought. An event so evil had occurred on board that the ship had been wrenched from reality and thus sailed endlessly into Weeping Mary's little fiefdom of hell.

_An even stranger event occurred in 1939 when in the month of December, nineteen babies were born in Silent Hill with a horrific birth defect known as "harlequin fetus," whose medical name is ichthyosis fetalis, and which typically presents only in one out of every several hundred thousand births. There are no external environmental causes for ichthyosis fetalis. Harlequin babies are born with their skin replaced by a hard shell of keratin, the same substance that makes up fingernails and hair, and take their name from the look of their faces. The mouth is grotesquely deformed, as the inflexible keratin pulls it into a parody of a harlequin clown's grin. Harlequin babies typically live no more than a few months, if that, though one man whose wife had given birth to one of the harlequin babies murdered the child, then his wife, and then committed suicide himself while in custody for the crimes at the Silent Hill jail. _

Augusta couldn't help herself. She turned away from the book on the table and kicked scattered books out of her path as she made her way to the shelf under the window where _A Record of Crime and Punishment in Toluca County – 1890-1900_ had burst out of a row of books just like it, one for every decade. She pulled the volume for the years 1930 through 1940, opened it, and flipped through it until she found the tables for each township.

There it was:

_December 23, 1939 – Stabbing with death resultant, St. Germain Avenue, North Silent Hill_ _December 23, 1939 – Stabbing with death resultant, St. Germain Avenue, North Silent Hill_ _December 24, 1939 – Suicide of male inmate at Silent Hill Detention Center/Silent Hill Police Department_, _Crichton Street, Central Silent Hill_

Interesting how by the 1930's suicides were being included in tables of violent crimes, she thought, but then again it was a record of crimes and punishments. The murders were the crimes, and maybe the suicide had been the punishment.

She closed the book and tossed it to the floor. There didn't seem to be any point in putting it back in place. Then she turned to look at the books on the table with its twisted and broken brass centerpiece. She had accomplished her goal in coming to the library; she knew all about Weeping Mary and the evil people who had brought her here with their worship. She knew what Weeping Mary had done to the town. She had something – the crest of an angel, who she suspected dressed in blue – that might just have power enough to help her escape from the hell that now stood in the place of the town she had once loved. Maybe it would even have power enough to help her take her daughter home.

If I can just take my child home, God, if I can just take her home... If you'll just give me this second chance, I promise I'll never want for another thing as long as I live.

But how would she do it? Out there – hell, for all she knew in here, upstairs – lurked Weeping Mary and Joseph. Weeping Mary wanted to torture her to feed on her. Joseph wanted to torture her probably just to have something to pass the time.

God, what if they really _were_ just upstairs? She shivered at the thought.

Where should she go now? When she had first realized she was going to Silent Hill, she had thought she was going to march into the principal's office at Nathaniel Hawthorne Elementary School where the Mother's Day card had been sent, and demand to know just what in hell was going on. There was no need to go there. Kitty hadn't even sent the card at all, much less sent it from there.

There was the brownstone on St. Germain Avenue she had shared with Joseph, but what would be there? Joseph seemed to have built himself a new, and far more opulent, home in Summerland Cemetery.

There were any number of restaurants and shops that had been among her favorites, but nothing seemed particularly special about any of them. There was no reason to go exploring them for their own sake, and the same was true of all the places she had loved while living here. Nothing had pointed her in the direction of the Silent Hill Wetlands Gardens, or the Public Art Gallery, Lakeside Amusement Park, or the Silent Hill Town Center mall.

Something suddenly seemed different about the books on the table. She stepped closer for a better look and saw that something red was soaking the paper in blotches that met one another as the paper grew saturated and began to sweat red beads.

Blood.

The pages flattened under liquid weight, and the drops met in trickles, which grew into streams. All four books were bleeding. It welled up between the pages and ran through the valley where they met, puddling on the table before dripping onto the floor.

On the last day she had worked at the Asheville visitors center, she had been enjoying milk and cookies on her lunch break and had spilled her milk, which had run across the table and dripped onto the floor, and the dripping had sounded exactly like the blood now dripping down from this table.

The dripping grew into a sound like rain. The books in the shelves under the windows and lined up in ranks in the bookcases behind shattered glass doors were bleeding now, and in addition to blood, some fluid that smelled vaguely fishy and terribly organic was now trickling down from every shelf. She had no idea what it could be.

The dripping grew into steady streams and the old, musty carpet of the Toluca Room began to turn red.

A sound like a heartbeat drummed up through the floor and Augusta yipped her disgusted surprise. The heart beat again and the blood dripping from the books shot into the air in great steaming spurts. It was like watching the life flow from a slashed artery.

She was too shocked to move, staring at the room bleeding around her and feeling the heartbeat shuddering through the walls and floor, up through her feet and legs. An enclosed place of flowing blood and some other vital fluid, and a heartbeat that seemed very close but far away at the same time... it made her think of...

A womb. And at that realization, her disgust shattered her reverie and she clutched her shovel and fled, flinging open the door to sprint through the stinking darkness beyond. As she ran she heard the door slam shut behind her and had she turned around she would have seen jets of blood spraying against the door's large square glass window.

She ran through the darkness surrounded by ranks of shelves that were suddenly alive with an obscene shuffling. The air smelled of dust and mold, and past the study area, the light that reached from the front of the library began to grow stronger. There was something – someone – watching from a place in front of the grand front doors, blocking her way out, but she couldn't tell who or what it might be because the spiral staircase at the front of the building blocked more than just a glimpse.. Augusta thought of turning back to try to find another way out, but two towering bookshelves slammed together behind her, and she screamed as she felt the wind from their collision puff forward. Had she been in their path they would have crushed her.

Now the shelves were moving forward and if she fell and they scraped over her they would reduce her to a smear on the floor, torn muscle and broken bone mixed with chips of shattered tile.

Running forward, two more large bookcases slammed together with a metallic clang, then two more, and two more, and two more, and two more. She could hear books flying from shelves behind her and tumbling to the floor. Her shoes pounded against the old tiles. Weeping Mary blocked the doors, she saw. Weeping Mary hovering in the air, but seated as though in a magnificent throne.

She had to dodge the coiled iron staircase to reach the great central circle beneath the glass dome high overhead, and as she reached the circle, where the thousand-pointed star looked like a massive blossom in marble, the final two bookshelves, those closest to the entrance, tried to meet and instead slammed hard into the staircase. Metal squealed a protest.

The floor was slick , and Augusta dropped to a crouch before she could slip and fall.

"A little blood and you come running? You're quite easy to frighten, are you not, dear?" said Weeping Mary through a wide smile.

Augusta said nothing. Weeping Mary was naked but for her sunglasses, seated on nothing in the air and cradling a perversely distended stomach, purple, veined, and bulging as something inside moved.

Augusta felt her lips quivering and imagined her face as revulsion rippled across it in waves. She pushed herself back, scooting away from the nasty thing she saw hovering in the air and lit from behind with the weak light of the tall, tall window. Water dripped from the broken places in the dome.

She felt the wind of it before she could turn and see, scream, and flatten herself on the floor as books, hundreds of them, came hurtling out of the darkness. Weeping Mary screamed laughter as the books converged, snapping into place with a flutter of pages and the crackling of their plastic dust jackets. Augusta watched a throne take shape. It built itself from the floor in a flurry of flying books that clapped together and clapped together and clapped together until the storm had spent itself in the space of a handful of seconds.

"Mm... Much better," Weeping Mary murmured. "A queen must have a throne, and surely now you know that I am a queen, do you not? Did you not come to this place to learn about me?"

"I-I d-did."

"Did you not learn then, that I am more than a queen?"

Augusta said quietly, "People used to worship you as a god."

"And they still do, my darling," Weeping Mary chuckled. "Some still do. And that's as it should be after all, because I AM a god."

Augusta slowly stood, saying nothing.

Weeping Mary looked immensely pleased. "Oh, you may believe the nonsense of your scarred god, but it's only because you are too foolish to believe the evidence of your eyes."

"Did you know that five years ago I very nearly walked in your world? Oh yes, it's true. I very nearly did. But the _Ehisdv-Uhutsi_–"

At the sound of the word from Weeping Mary's lips, it seemed as if the whole world vibrated and Augusta reeled on her feet from a sudden flash of dizziness and whimpered.

Weeping Mary giggled. "My Captive was incomplete. I could only eat half of the child's soul. It's been a very long time since the ritual of the _Ehisdv-Uhutsi_–"

The sudden vertigo again. Augusta clenched her teeth and her fists to make it pass.

"–was performed, you understand. And when the flawed ritual was performed again, to provide me with another half-a-soul to consume so that with a single soul I might feast on the suffering of my Captives, it just seemed that everything went wrong..."

Weeping Mary was changing. Her skin lightened and her hair flashed golden and spilled in waves across her shoulders, and she said in a Southern accent, "Everything just fucked up a storm of wrong, I suppose you could say."

"My priestess gave me two Captives, and I ate half the soul of each, but you know something, darlin'? Even when I melted my two Captives together, everything was still just so royally fucked that I surprised myself and just stepped right into your world. I didn't especially want to at the time, but I did, and a man with a rifle shot me back here.'

She had changed again, and was now Asian and impossibly beautiful but for that hideous swollen stomach.

"Oh, I don't know if I'll do it again any time soon, though I know my people wish me to. I'll think about it. In fact, there's a girl out there just five years old now, but a part of me is riding along in her tiny little womb."

Augusta started as though slapped.

"That's right, sweetie," Weeping Mary laughed, "She's out there right now in a place called Portland, Maine, but some day she'll come back. Some day I'll call her here and she'll bring that little piece of me here and I just might step into your world again. I'd like you to think about that if you'd be so kind, please. I want you to die worried because that would taste simply delightful."

The thing inside her roiling stomach seemed agitated, as if it wanted out. Weeping Mary spread her legs, her skin tanning and her hair falling down in the shiny curls again as she did, and a fountain of fluid jetted through the air from her vagina, spattering on the iron staircase.

"It's amazing how it happened," she said calmly as something huge began to emerge from inside her, "But somehow your scarred god's whore managed to spirit away the other half of my first Captive's soul, and had laid her nasty hand on the other half of the soul of the second Captive, and when it was all said and done, it was your god's whore who managed to create a tiny girl- child with a pure soul to give to that man with his rifle."

A head had emerged, slick and cowled with glistening sac. Augusta fumbled for her gun, trying not to suffocate in her horror. Her lungs felt as if they had forgotten how to work properly.

"Pure soul or not though, I'm in her body, and so someday I'll have her."

Oh, sweet Christ in heaven. Amniotic fluid poured over the books in sheets. The thing emerging was gigantic, the size of a fully grown man, and maybe that's what it was, but Weeping Mary made sounds of pleasure as it emerged.

Augusta raised the gun, thumbed the safety, aimed, and fired. Weeping Mary's left breast exploded.

And Weeping Mary laughed, and it was a sound that rolled over Augusta and through the deserted library as though she it was the best joke she'd heard in years.

"You can't hurt me in my world, my love," she said, "Only in your world. Only in yours, which is quite a mighty problem for you, I'd think."

As her breast grew back as perfect as it had ever been, Weeping Mary arched her back, and moaned blissfully as the thing inside slipped out. It was indeed a man. A black man, perfectly formed and firmly muscled, slick with Weeping Mary's fluids, his head wrapped in a caul like a hangman's hood. He lay in a puddle spreading across the many-pointed star on the floor, dazed.

His legs twitched and as he sat up, an arm reached up to the caul to tear it away, and it came away in glistening pieces.

Weeping Mary laughed and blood and warm fluids still ran from between her legs. Her belly looked like a giant deflated balloon and hung down from the throne in a swoon of stretched flesh.

Augusta screamed, and tried to hide her face, but with her shovel in one hand and the gun in the other, she couldn't.

Weeping Mary had given birth to Joseph.


	26. The job at the Arlington Hotel

The Joseph-thing's eyes were milky blind but he seemed to stare at Augusta and know she was there. Weeping Mary giggled.

"That's delicious," she squealed, and Augusta started and turned to her.

Weeping Mary's hands dripped with red slime and she licked her fingers delightedly.

"Wonderful. This is your fear, your anger, your disgust, your resentment – do you see how you feed me now? Do you see what I'm taking from you since you've taken away some of the others who fed me?"

She held out her hands and a rope of slick red goo broke away, fell, and hit the wet marble floor with an unspeakable slap.

Augusta whimpered; she couldn't help it and hated the sound.

"That's right darling... be afraid for me. I love the way you taste."

The Joseph-thing stood motionless. Augusta turned and glanced at it and backed away. The thought of even standing in the same room as it made her skin crawl. That thing... it had come from _inside_ Weeping Mary.

Weeping Mary, her gruesome stomach sagging low, inserted a finger in her mouth, slowly, languidly, looking like, Augusta thought, some whore in a pornographic movie.

Her finger emerged, and she said, "I don't think I've ever been called that before, but I don't object."

And suddenly her stomach shrank back into tanned and toned perfection with a vile sucking sound, and a pair of blood red high heels appeared on her feet, completing the image.

"Why would a 'good girl' like you ever watch pornography, anyhow?"

None of your goddamn business, Augusta thought, but couldn't say. Even 'good girls' were allowed to add spice to their sex lives.

"I wouldn't say I have a great deal of experience with good girls, but I'll take you at your word, dearest. I suppose they are."

"STOP THAT! Stop doing that!"

Weeping Mary clapped her hands like a delighted child, splattering her grin and her breasts with suddenly flowing red slime.

"Anger, my love," she said, "Anger and fear and resentment and disgust... What you feel here only goes to feed me."

Out of the corner of her eye, Augusta saw the Joseph-thing take a step forward, and she dropped her shovel and spun on her heel, raised the gun and fired at it. The Ruger kicked, and the last three bullets in the clip traveled in a line up from the spot where the Joseph-thing's heart might or might not have been. One struck its chest, another its throat and the last its face just beneath its nose. It had been hard to tell from the damage the bullet had done to Weeping Mary's breast, but they _were _hollowpoint after all, she saw; they entered through tiny pinholes and exited from craters that could have easily cupped a softball.

What remained of the Joseph-thing's head flopped forward, then fell off and hit the floor, but it still remained on its feet. Augusta's stomach heaved.

Weeping Mary sat forward, then reached up and tore away her sunglasses and threw them aside. They flew away trailing red slime like bloody mucus. She clenched her fists and the slime squelched, then vanished. Blood pumped from her gaping eye sockets.

"You, my dear, are very, _very _close to upsetting me. That wasn't really him, and when I said I wanted you to die worried, I didn't mean right _now,_ you silly bitch. I'm not done feeding off you." She glared down at the headless Joseph-thing, then snarled, "The real dark man is still out _there_ somewhere. I had to work hard to make this one and thanks to you now he's useless!"

She sounded like a cranky child as she hopped down from her throne and strode grumbling to the headless Joseph-thing. Her high heels clicked on the marble tiles. Augusta tried to back away as she crouched to pick up the shovel. Weeping Mary turned and seemed to glare at her.

Augusta's hand closed around the shovel handle.

"You know you can't hurt me. You may be able to hurt one of my creations, and even those in my army, but never me." She turned to the Joseph-thing and patted it on the shoulder. "I thought it was high time for you to suffer a bit to make up for what you've taken from me today. I had a special treat in mind, but you know something, dear? I think actually, you've made it better."

Augusta stepped back. Weeping Mary smiled cruelly.

"Go now, and make her suffer for me." She patted the Joseph-thing on the shoulder again and it stepped forward.

Augusta jammed the gun in her pocket and took another step away from Weeping Mary and the thing that had come from inside her.

The Joseph-thing's foot bumped against the ruin of its head lying on the floor, and kicked it aside. Its penis had sprung up long and hard, and bobbed with every step it took. Augusta saw it and shrieked. Weeping Mary doubled over with laughter, blood pouring from her empty eye sockets. She slapped her knees, her bloody breasts joggling as she howled her amusement.

If it gets me and tries to put that thing in me I'll go crazy, thought Augusta. My mind will pop like a balloon on a needle. She backed away, her fingers wrapped around the shovel handle. Where could she hit it? Ordinarily she could aim for the head, but she had already shot it off. That and she had put a bullet through its heart, if it even had one. How could she force it away?

When she tried to run, her feet skidded on the wet marble floor, then caught and she broke away to the left, skirting Weeping Mary and the lurching Joseph-thing to throw herself toward the iron staircase. She took the steps two at a time as the old iron beneath her feet squealed and lurched. When she felt the Joseph-thing's hand close around her ankle, she somehow expected it, fell, twisted, and turned to stab at its arms with her shovel.

It only squeezed harder, yanking at her foot as it tried to drag her down. Augusta grunted, digging until the blade of the shovel had stripped away a long, bleeding shank of muscle from the Joseph-thing's forearm. It let go, the bone of its forearm glistening and white, and fell back. Augusta turned, lurched to her feet, and pounded up the rest of the stairs to the second floor. Her flashlight gave a glimpse of ranks of shelves separated by wide aisles leading back into the darkness as she ran forward. Distant windows glowed with faint, gloomy light.

The Joseph-thing was coming up the stairs. She halted, spun and charged. As the Joseph-thing reached the head of the stairs, one arm hanging limply, blood pouring over bone, she swung the shovel with a keening wail. It hit with a smacking impact that shuddered all the way up to her shoulders. The Joseph-thing fell back, but grabbed the rail and launched itself at her again. She hit it again, then reared back, lunged forward, and stabbed the end of the blade into its stomach. It grabbed for the shovel and she pulled it back, then stabbed forward again, sinking the blade into the bleeding gash across its belly. Its knees buckled and it tumbled backward, landing on its back on the stairs with a heavy clang.

She should try to finish it off now, but there wasn't room on the stairs. For all she knew, it would grab her ankle, twist, and rip it off.

It was climbing to its feet. Blood pumped from the gaping rift across its stomach. She waited for it to climb toward her, then thrust the shovel into the wound, straining to push it forward, working to dig deeper. If she fell forward and it grabbed her it would kill her. It reached for the shovel again, and when she pulled the shovel forward, it pulled the Joseph-thing along. It wrapped its hands around the shovel handle and began to pull it from the wound.

Its hands were slick with blood, its right from that flowing from its shredded arm, its left from the gushing wound just beneath its ribs. Its fingers slipped and scrabbled along the steel handle. When Augusta thrust forward again, the handle slid through the Joseph-thing's fingers and the blade drove deeper inside. She felt it strike hard against its spine. If she could just drive it in hard enough to snap its spine...

It grabbed the handle, squeezed until its joints popped in protest, and began to pull the blade from its belly. Augusta screamed and forced it forward. The Joseph-thing tottered backward, its spine bending back. She realized that if the Joseph-thing's spine suddenly snapped and she fell forward, she would probably break her neck as she tumbled down the stairs.

She shoved forward, hard, one last time, and pulled back. The Joseph-thing's spine broke with a thunderous crack and its upper body flopped backward, its fingertips clutching at its ankles. Skin and flesh tore, and its stomach gaped open like a great red mouth, spouting blood.

It staggered, unsteady on its feet as if confused, trying to force its upper body upright. Augusta stepped back. The Joseph-thing's penis, still hard and throbbing, pointed at her like a dagger. It shuffled forward and climbed a step, then another, and then it stepped onto the second floor.

Augusta shrieked and swung the shovel, hit the splintered remains of the Joseph-thing's spine, and the bits of bone, muscle, and gristly cartilage that bound its upper body to its lower were sliced in two. The Joseph-thing's upper body hit the floor with a wet thump, splattering blood.

Unburdened, the Joseph-thing's legs began to walk forward, coils of intestines spilling out of the lower half of its stomach, swinging wet and heavy. Its upper body, trailing more coils, scrambled across the floor, pulling itself along with its arms. The sound of Weeping Mary's laughter rose up from below; she shrieked and howled like a lunatic.

She probably was. Augusta turned and ran. Off-balance, the Joseph-thing shambled after her, the legs frequently tripping and falling, the upper body pulling itself along with slow, horrible determination.

Shelves upon shelves, tall metal bookcases crusted with rust. The floor here was carpeted and puffed with mold with every step. The light faded as the bookshelves parted around a reading area with ruined sofas and chairs and tables with mildewy magazines still laying open.

At the edge of the reading area, where the shelves closed ranks again, Augusta leapt onto a bookcase and quickly clambered to the top. She trained her flashlight on the two halves of the Joseph-thing padding drunkenly along toward her. The upper half reached the shelf first, leaving a wide, wet streak of blood behind it, and began to climb. The legs trailed closely behind. Augusta hopped down on the far side of the bookcase, landed in a crouch, then sprang up and threw her weight against the shelves.

They were bolted to the floor.

She strained, groaning, feeling her pulse exploding behind her eyes, hearing it roar in her ears, feeling her scalp throb, until the bookshelf shifted, lifted up from the floor with a creak, and tumbled forward just as the upper half of the Joseph-thing threw an arm over the top. She heard bones break as the bookcase crushed the Joseph-thing, heard books spilling from the shelves with a sound that seemed like the noise a waterfall choked with ice would make. She rode the bookcase down and cracked her head hard against the edge of a shelf when it hit the floor. She lay where she fell, eyelids fluttering, breathless from the pain ricocheting through her skull. Clouds of dust and mold spores swam through her vision.

Weeping Mary, now clothed in her jeans and chunky sandals, and not-quite-bikini top, suddenly leaned down into the beam of Augusta's flashlight, grinning beneath her sunglasses.

If she tried to move or speak, Augusta was sure her lunch would come up in a stinking flood, so she stayed still. If Weeping Mary wanted to kill her now, she could, and could do it easily. Augusta was too dizzy, nauseous, and in pain to stop her.

"Wasn't that _fun?_" Weeping Mary giggled, "Wanna do it again?"

Then she vanished and Augusta heard a loud pop as air rushed in to fill the void where she had stood.

The Joseph-thing squirmed weakly beneath her, crushed under the bookcase. After several long moments, Augusta staggered to her feet, gagging once, and stumbled away from the fallen shelves, leaning heavily on the shovel. In the reading area, she lowered herself carefully into an armchair that enveloped her in the odor of wet decay. She leaned back and sat still, her body wrapped around the uncomfortable lump of her backpack, until the pain in her skull faded to a dull, throbbing ache. Then she sat up carefully and reached around to the front pocket of the backpack, unzipped it and felt inside through a jumble of lip balms, eye drops, a crushed box of Band-Aids, an almost empty tube of Neo-Sporin, until her fingers closed around a small bottle of Advil. She withdrew, took four pills from the bottle and swallowed them dry, then put the bottle back into the pocket and zipped it closed again.

She waited, then stood and took a deep breath. The air stank, like a floating fog of sickness, of the library serenely rotting around her.

I think I'm in shock again, she thought, otherwise I'd be bawling like a baby and clawing at my own eyes. I should have gone crazy, but I guess this is better. This has happened before. I should have gone insane a dozen times over since coming here.

On Weeping Mary's orders, the Joseph-thing had wanted to rape her. If it managed to free itself from beneath the bookcase, it would probably still try, crawling after her broken and bloody and half-crushed to pulp.

She refused to think about it because to do so would paralyze her. She had fought it off and for the moment at least, it was no longer a threat. That would have to be good enough for now. She should leave before it wriggled free.

She finally noticed that she was bathed in its blood. It had sprayed all over, and her clothes were cold and wetly sticky. It streaked her arms and face; that would definitely have to go. If she could find a rag and some water that hadn't gone stagnant, she would definitely have to wash that off. Meantime, though, she thought as she walked away, I need to figure out how to get out of this place with Kitty. I have to get out of here.

She was descending the stairs, feeling them quake beneath her feet and thinking she certainly wouldn't trust them to take her up to the third floor, when she realized that she hadn't gotten all the information she had wanted to find in the Toluca Room. She had learned plenty about Weeping Mary and her influence on Silent Hill, but next to nothing about those under her influence – the murderers, rapists, and other monsters parading through the city's history. There hadn't been much about any of them outlined in blue for her to read.

She refused to go back to the Toluca Room. She wanted out of the library. The mold and the mildew and the shadows were too much to bear. Maybe it wasn't important to know any more names. Walter Sullivan, Joshua Blackwell... monsters. That was all they were, and all they needed to be called. Weeping Mary created monsters, and maybe nothing more needed to be known. She stepped over the scattered books that had been Weeping Mary's throne as she crossed the thousand-pointed marble star, looked up at the broken dome high above, and shoved open the doors to step outside into the mist again.

Denyer Avenue lay still and damp in the softly falling snowflakes. Augusta stepped down from the sidewalk into the street, searching the mist. Weeping Mary seemed to have decided to leave her alone for the time being, and of course there was no sign of Kitty or the Blue Lady, and thankfully no trace of Joseph.

I don't know what to do now, she thought. I don't know where to go. I think if I can stop Joseph somehow, that might be enough to get out of here, but I don't know. I don't know where my child is, or exactly what I need to do to get her back, and I don't know if I can even leave this place because Weeping Mary, or whatever it really is, wants to torture me until she's fat and happy again.

Maybe I should kill myself.

She sank to her knees and gently lay the shovel on the pavement beside her, put her head in her hands, and tried to stay still and breathe deeply, and prayed until she felt better.

Dear God, I don't know what to do now. I figure You're the only thing keeping me sane through all this, and for that I thank You, but even so I don't know how much more I can take. Whatever is left that I need to go through, please just point me in its direction. I just want to get through it so I can leave. All I want to do is take Kitty home. I know she's in the care of one of Your angels, but please just tell me what to do so I can have her back.

I know that Joseph and Weeping Mary are more evil than anything I ever knew existed before. I know that both of them want to hurt me. What I don't know is how to keep them from doing that.

Augusta sighed, opened her eyes and looked up into the mist. A snowflake melted on her face, and then another. Well, what now?

Weeping Mary had said she couldn't hurt Kitty, but that someone else could. That probably meant Joseph. Which meant Augusta would have to stop him.

Which meant she would have to kill him.

Augusta picked up her shovel and stood. That would take bullets. Nothing powerful enough to build itself a tomb of black marble in Summerland Cemetery would be taken down with a shovel. If she could stop Joseph, she would remove the most dire threat to Kitty.

But would she even have to? The Blue Lady was an angel. Couldn't an angel protect a little girl?

She wanted to scream but knew that if she did, it would call anything lurking in the mist right to her.

"Don't know what to do? Let me help," said a deep voice behind her.

She jumped at the sound, and spun around to see Joseph standing with his hands in his pockets, leaning against one of the fancy old wrought iron lampposts nearby.

"Didn't I always used to tell you that you thought too much? Look where it gets you. You can't even make a simple decision. You're paralyzed."

Just as friendly as you please. He even smiled as he said it and chuckled, amused. He looked alive. Healthy. He wore his black pants and white dress shirt, and the red, black, and white tie.

"You stay away from me," Augusta thrust out the shovel to ward him off. "Just let me take Kitty and go."

"Nope." he never stopped smiling.

"Why! What did I ever do to you? Why are you doing this? How are you even _able_ to do all this? You're dead!"

Joseph shook his head good-naturedly. "Lets take those one at a time. Why? Because I hate you. What did you ever do to me? Well... Hot Springs is not that large a place, and after what happened here in Silent Hill I had to find a new job. There was an opening for an assistant manager at the Arlington Hotel –"

The pleasant amusement burst like something dead on a highway in the baking sun.

"–the goddamn _ARLINGTON HOTEL_, Gussy."

Gussy. A nickname she had always hated, which had attached itself to her like a parasite in elementary school, until in the sixth grade she had been called by it one time too many and had shoved the offending bully headfirst into a cement wall.

Joseph yanked his clenched fists from his pockets and shook them at her. His breath snorted out in furious bursts.

"The ARLINGTON. You remember it I'm sure. Right at the head of Bathhouse Row, right there on Central Avenue. Five hundred rooms. The place Al Capone used to stay. But you know what? Word had gotten around. I guess you told all your whiny-loser-bitch friends, and they told God knows who all else, and because of _YOU, _half of Hot Springs thought I was the devil incarnate."

Augusta opened and closed her mouth, but couldn't find words to speak.

"You cost me a good job, you _BITCH._ That's what you did to me." He stared at her, chest heaving. "_That's _what you did to me. Now, why am I doing this? See above. And, how am I able to do this even though I'm dead? Look around you, idiot! Do you think 'dead' means a damn thing in this place anymore?"

"But-but... that was five years ago!"

He waved a hand dismissively. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Five years, and during those five years I moved to Florida and got a job as an assistant manager at the Breakers Hotel down in Palm Beach. It's sort of their answer to the Arlington. Thing is though, I wanted the job at the Arlington. Therefore, it really doesn't matter how long ago it was or where I worked until I wrapped my car around a palm tree in Boca Raton. The problem is, I didn't get the job I _wanted. _I _wanted _the job at the Arlington, Gussy, and because of _you_ I didn't get it."

Augusta swallowed.

"You know where I was going in Boca Raton?" His voice rose from a growl to a scream, "I was going to the _International-fucking-Museum of Cartoon Art!_"

"I didn't cause that!" she cried. "That wasn't my fault! And I didn't go around town in Hot Springs telling everyone what happened. It wasn't my fault my friends told other people! They just wanted to know why I was so depressed!"

He stared at her.

"Why won't you just let me take Kitty and go?'

"Did we not just go over all that? I'm not letting you go because I hate you and because I am going to get my pound of flesh from you. Actually, hell, what do you weigh these days? I'm guessing one-twenty-five, so that means I intend to get my one-hundred-and-twenty-five pounds of flesh from you, baby."

"Then will you let Kitty go? She doesn't have anything to do with this."

"Of course not! You know, I have to thank you for bringing her here. A lot of what you find here now you find first in your own heart. She didn't exist until you came here and up she sprang. When I dragged her away that was enough to keep you going. I hadn't planned on that."

Augusta gasped, "What did you do to her – did you hurt her? If you did, I'll–"

"You'll what? You won't do dick, you bitch. You can't. You can't hurt what's already dead."

"_Did you hurt her?" _she screamed, and tightened her grip on the shovel.

"If I didn't, it wasn't because I didn't try. You worked a surprise into her. All you had to do was imagine it once."

She bounced on the balls of her feet, wanting to leap at him and kill him and tasting her pulse in her throat. "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, but if you hurt her I'll die making you pay for it, you sick, vicious, _evil_ son of a fucking _bitch_!"

When he spoke, it was a roar that rattled the windows of the buildings nearby, and set Augusta's ears to ringing. She felt the ground vibrating beneath her feet. Joseph's clothes burst from his body in shreds. His skin blackened and in an instant a thousand arms – a thousand night-black arms – had sprouted, their fists clenching and unclenching, waving furiously. Reaching for her.

"_YOU'LL DO NO SUCH THING, WOMAN. FUCK WITH ME AND YOU'LL BATHE IN SALTWATER AS I STRIP THE SKIN FROM YOUR FLESH. I'LL FEED YOU YOUR OWN HEART. I'LL FIND THAT BRAT AND YOU'LL WATCH WHILE I EAT HER UP IN BIG, BLOODY BITES. FUCK WITH ME AND YOU'LL PRAY FOR DEATH, YOU WRETCHED CUNT!!_"

His upper body rode above a writhing cloud of arms, and he looked down at her smugly. Echoes bounced and rebounded off the buildings.

Augusta turned and fled. To kill him she would need bullets, enough so that even if she couldn't kill him she could at least blow him to pieces. He had hurt her daughter.

As she sprinted down Denyer Avenue, she heard the sound of a thousand black arms scraping across the pavement behind her. Joseph was following.


	27. Mannequins in moldy dresses

As she sprinted down Denyer Avenue, the sound of flesh scraping over pavement behind her resolved itself into a muffled slapping. She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw Joseph in pursuit like a ghoulish millipede. In an instant she saw it all: below his waist his body had become a long, thick tail of black flesh studded with arms – God only knew how many – all along its length. The slapping she heard was the palm of each hand smacking the pavement. Ripples flowed along the tail as it whipped back and forth.

Augusta thought of a caterpillar; she thought of a millipede.

Joseph laughed, and called out to her, "I can tear you apart again! Sometimes you need to die to get into Silent Hill, and if you do, when you die again, that's when it's really over!"

The intersection of Denyer Avenue and Massey Street was no more than a few yards ahead. If she went right she would be running back toward the heart of downtown Silent Hill. If she ran left, the Massey Street Bridge would take her across the Illiniwak River and into East Silent Hill.

She heard a grunt behind her and then came the sensation of something heavy passing by not far above her head. Joseph spilled into the intersection in coils; it was like watching a cobra strike, then coil again. He blocked the right side of the intersection, leaving only the bridge.

He hovered in the air, his body weaving from side to side dreamily, hypnotically, as he sneered at her.

"Ah, ah, ahhh..." he cautioned mockingly. "Don't you want to see a little more of the city? You know that natural curiosity of yours wants to see it all! We can't have you backtracking now, can we?"

She was already running toward the bridge.

"That's it, _sweetie-pie_! That's the way, _darling_! Get on the bridge! You can't go left and you can't go right if you're on the bridge! It might as well be a tunnel, and I'm coming in right behind you, and when I catch you, I'm going to _play_ with you, _sweetheart_!"

He began to laugh, hysterically, blotting out the sound of the river flowing below. The slapping began again, though now it sounded more hollow, and soon it was replaced by the twanging of cables being plucked and the sound of a thousand hands smacking metal.

Massey Street crossed the river enmeshed in a frame of metal beams knotted together by steel cables. Behind her, Joseph had leapt up onto the frame, and passed himself along from hand to hand. Rust flaked down with every handhold.

The Joseph-thing's blood was drying on her face and arms, tightening.

"_Get away from me!"_ she screamed and was rewarded with a peal of laughter.

"I'm coming for you!" he sang out.

The Massey Street Bridge was beginning to shake beneath her feet, Augusta realized with horror. As she ran it quivered. Why?

Floods. Five years ago, in the time of the rainy September, Silent Hill had drowned. The rivers filled up and lake began to rise, and springs chewed their way to the surface. How high could the Illniwak River have gotten? How strongly had it pounded and thundered against the bridge?

The pavement beneath her feet was cracked, fragmented, and in places was missing altogether, revealing sturdy metal mesh. She noticed for the first time that the railing to her left looked bent and battered. How badly was the bridge damaged? Her mind seized on the question and began to chant it like a mantra. How badly is the bridge damaged? How badly is the bridge damaged?

A cable popped behind her, whistled through the air, and snapped against the pavement. Joseph roared in pain.

The furious sound. Joseph roaring was the furious sound she had heard in Summerland Cemetery. She ran on; the bridge shivered. A rhythmic grunting behind her was Joseph crawling after her, reaching for her, one of his arms broken and dragging.

She felt a flare of hope – if Joseph could be hurt, he could probably be killed.

The bridge had begun to twist. The roadbed was sloping downward to the left, toward the side where the roaring waters had battered and beaten and eaten away at its supports. Cables snapped behind her, singing like harp strings through the air. Cracks chased one another across the unbroken slabs of pavement ahead.

Joseph grunted and panted, and when a beam tore away with an offended scream and fell, he roared again.

As pieces of the bridge broke away and tumbled through the mist to the water below; the sounds of splashes rose up. The Toluca River was wide. The Illiniwak River was wide. So wide. Too wide. Each was as broad as two, maybe two and a half, city blocks.

A grinding roar exploded behind her, and the tilt in the bridge suddenly reversed itself, tossing her to her knees. The span behind her had collapsed and with its weight gone, the span before her rocked back into place.

"I'll still get you," called a voice. She turned and saw Joseph caged by bent beams not far behind. "_I'll still come for you, bitch!_"

She backed away, then turned to run.

Joseph screamed from behind, "_Go ahead! Run! You'll have to face me sometime! Come home and face me, if you want to try to get out of here, bitch!"_

Come home and face me. Augusta ran away. Come home and face me, if you want to try to get out of here. He had summoned her here, and facing him might be the way to get out. She was planning to try anyway – he had hurt her child and for that he had to die, and if he could be hurt, he could die after all, she thought.

She would go to the place that had once been her home. Joseph would be waiting there. If she fought him there and won, maybe she could leave, and finally take her daughter to the place that was now her home. Weeping Mary be damned. Weeping Mary was damned.

Joseph roared a last time behind her.

Metal complained, groaning and creaking, as she crossed the bridge, and when she finally stepped onto the ground again, she felt her legs quivering, and tried to will them to stop. A tear escaped and slipped down her cheek. She shrugged to wipe it away on her upper sleeve, and cringed as the smell of the Joseph-thing's dried blood rose up.

Come home and face me if you want to try to get out of here. Joseph was silent behind her, though the Massey Street Bridge still mumbled to itself. Weeping Mary would try to keep her here, but maybe, if she could kill Joseph that would still be just enough to tear the fabric of this hell, and let her step through to the real world again.

Weeping Mary couldn't hurt Kitty while she was in the care of the Blue Lady, and with Joseph gone, who was left?

So. She had to find bullets. Lots of them, and if she happened to stumble across something more powerful than her gun, that would be fine as well. An earlier thought rose up again: if she couldn't kill Joseph, maybe she could at least blow him apart. Then, maybe she could separate the pieces and he wouldn't be able to pull himself back together.

Maybe the worst part about all this was _still _being unable to say for sure just what the rules of this place were. Some things died and stayed dead. Others died and came back. Others came back, and were harder to kill than ever before. They staggered on missing a heart or with their heads blown to pieces.

Augusta sighed and peered into the fog. East Silent Hill's commercial district was a ribbon of shops and restaurants running north to south, gathered on the street that faced the riverside park and the Illiniwak beyond that. Beyond, the grand Victorian mansions looked down on the squares, and to the north, lines of 1920's bungalows unrolled along the streets to the edges of Paleville National Park. A handful of tiny corner groceries were scattered among the houses.

Silent Hill High School and Borden Street Elementary School stood in this neighborhood too, she remembered.

Would any of these stores have .45-caliber bullets? East Silent Hill was the most upscale part of the city, where the wealthy lived in their Victorian palaces, and the upper middle-class in their eighty-year-old bungalows. Augusta wasn't sure she would find a sporting goods store or a gun shop in a neighborhood like this.

Actually, she realized, she could only think of one sporting goods store in town, at the mall downtown. Which meant if she couldn't find anything here, she would have to find her way to the Silent Hill Town Center and see what might be there.

But, she thought, I'm here so I might as well start looking.

"Okay," she breathed. Massey Street ran straight ahead through the Victorian district to the edge of the national park, eleven blocks away. She stood in the middle of its intersection with Pickton Street, and to the south along Pickton, the commercial district ran for eight blocks, most of them very narrow, to a small plaza facing the lake. Eight blocks, most of them wide, to the north, Pickton Street curved and merged with Ireland Street, which bridged the river between East Silent Hill and the Windowbox District.

She turned to walk south.

The same dark brick buildings with shops on the ground floor and apartments above that filled the rest of the city's commercial areas clustered side by side along Pickton Street. The same trees, large and with only a bare sprinkling of fresh new leaves, stood at attention along the street, though Augusta noticed the flowerbeds at the base of each tree foamed with blossoms. Above the storefronts, boxes of flowers sat on the sills of many apartment windows. They were alive with color and greenery. From one, Augusta noticed garlands of beavertail cactus dangling limply and studded with blinding bright yellow and red flowers.

Beavertail cactus didn't bloom until June or July , but nothing else made much sense in Silent Hill either.

The stores she passed looked forlorn behind their dirty show windows. She passed by the shops, almost all of them art galleries, of one long block, then crossed Rogers Avenue. The merchandise in every store was filthy, old, and decayed. A shop that sold "fine wines," the bottles coated with dust and displayed amid scattered dead insects, and a shop with leather jackets in the window that had all grown white, furry coats of mold. At a jewelry store, the display windows were shattered and lay in splinters on the sidewalk. She paused to look. A diamond necklace was still draped around the neck of a bust made of black marble.

She looked closer. Lines of scum had tricked down from the eyes of the bust, and dried on its cheeks. It looked like old blood. More necklaces, along with bracelets and rings, had been lifted from their beds of moldy black velvet, but had been dropped on the ground among the shattered glass from the windows.

There were smears of blood on the sidewalk. They looked old. Someone had broken the windows of the jewelry store, then for whatever reason, crawled away on all fours, their hands bleeding. Augusta frowned and studied the smears, then cautiously followed them around the back bumper of a parked car, tracked them across the pavement of Pickton Street, then stopped short, reared back, and made a sound, a startled squeak like an aborted scream, in the back of her throat.

A body lay in the middle of the street, on the yellow lines that divided the northbound lanes from the south. It was impossible to tell if it had been a man or woman, though its clothing looked like that of a man. Its flesh was gone, reduced to a few patches of gluey brown sludge. It lay sprawled as though it had died making a snow angel, except its arms below the elbows were missing. The bones didn't look as though they had been cut through, but rather as if they had dissolved. A large metal stake was driven through its forehead, pinning it to the ground. Impaled on the stake, nailed to the skull, was a small wooden plaque with a single word burned into its surface.

THIEF

Nearby stood a large wagon heaped with rusted VCRs and a couple of ruined televisions, Playstations and other video game players, and scattered video games and movies. They looked as though they had been sitting in the wagon, in Pickton Street in the mist, for a very long time.

She remembered the looted electronics store on King Street. Thief indeed. Something had happened to this person when he or she, probably he, had touched the diamonds behind the broken windows. Augusta didn't want to think about what that might have been, but an image immediately sprang to mind; the man, pulling the large wagon behind him, searching for something even more valuable than repairable electronics. He would steal them, leave Silent Hill, and sell everything, but maybe keep a Playstation or a nice ring.

But when he grabbed at the necklace around the slender neck carved of black marble, his hands had begun to burn and the skin to bubble. Had the graceful lady's head, blank-eyed beneath her carved black curls, begun to cry then?

His hands were dissolving, a wretched odor rising up from sizzling flesh. Tiny bands of muscle peeled up, blackened, and melted. The bones began to show, then the marrow inside them. He had fallen and tried to crawl away, his hands dripping blood. When his hands were gone, his wrists were next to go, then bit by bit, his forearms. All the way up to the elbows, and when he finally lay in the middle of Pickton Street, whimpering, his throat raw from screaming, Weeping Mary, a mallet and stake and little wooden placard in her hands, had leaned down with a happy grin, carefully centered the plaque, then the stake, and then she gleefully pounded it through his skull.

Horrible. Augusta turned and walked away. Her skin crawled at the images her mind had thrown at her and she shivered violently.

Intersection – Pickton Street and Beufield Avenue. Coffee shop, bistro, Silent Hill Unitarian Universalist Church. Intersection – Pickton Street and Glatman Avenue. Glatman Photography Studios. Elizabeth's Bathtub: Fine Soaps, Oils, and Beauty Supplies. Denyer's Pet Land. Intersection – Pickton and Panzram Avenue.

The blocks here really were very narrow, usually only three storefronts wide, roughly six long. The next block fronting Pickton was entirely taken up by the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration. Beyond the church, there were only two more blocks to the plaza.

Augusta walked past the church, crossed the next street, Schaefer Avenue, then passed three clothing stores that all featured stylish outfits decaying on the mannequins in their windows. As she crossed Hilley Street, she looked at building, six stories tall and a tower in comparison to the other buildings on Pickton Street, on the next block and sighed. Berkowitz's Department Store. She had forgotten about it.

It would have bullets in the sporting goods department. She couldn't help herself, and smiled.

Berkowitz's occupied the entire block, half with its building, the other half with its parking lot, though once upon a time there had probably been houses behind the store where the lot now sprawled. Augusta hurried by giant show windows to the front door, pulled at the handles, and discovered they were locked. She couldn't see a broken window anywhere along the front of the store, and though the doors that opened onto the parking lot at the rear of the building might be unlocked or a window facing the plaza on the next block, across the next street, might be broken, somehow she suspected nobody had ever gotten into the store. That meant it would still be fully stocked, down to the boxes of bullets in the sporting good department.

The show windows were easier to break than the thicker glass of the doors, she learned, when the shovel bounced off the lower glass panel of one door, leaving nothing more than a scratch. So, she swung at the nearest window until it shattered and fell away in an avalanche of crystal crumbs and the stink of mildew belched out like the smell of an opened grave. The mannequins in the window in their moldy dresses were little more than abstract human shapes of clear plastic like ice sculptures, but Augusta still tried not to touch them as she stepped up and into the display. There was something about their hands placed jauntily on hips, or raised to their eyes as if scanning the horizon that was just... creepy. Augusta had never liked mannequins.


	28. Gun violence

Berkowitz's Department Store was a Silent Hill institution that had thrived uninterrupted since the day in 1883 that Moses D. Berkowitz opened an "Elegant Millinery for Fashionable Ladies and Gentlemen" in Old Silent Hill. Shoppers continued to parade through its doors even after the Silent Hill Town Center opened for business with JC Penney, Montgomery Ward, Sears, and Parisian rubbing shoulders with more than fifty other smaller shops. The arrival of Wal-Mart and K-Mart in separate strip shopping centers on Nathan Avenue hadn't fazed Berkowitz's. It had opened branches in Springfield, Decatur, Bloomington-Normal, and St. Louis, and by 1999 there had even been rumors of Berkowitz's opening a grand mega-store in the heart of Chicago's ritziest downtown shopping district.

The interior of Berkowitz's flagship store, on the south end of what was once an upscale street at the very edge of a spectacular district of Victorian mansions, was dank and black, and reeked of the tangy, woody smell of mildew.

She had consulted a store directory near the front doors. The heaviest merchandise in the store, housewares, including furniture, appliances, and heavy exercise machines, filled the first floor. The second floor was home to toys and children's clothing, the third to ladies clothing, lingerie, jewelry, makeup, and perfume, the fourth to sporting goods and shoes, the fifth to menswear and men's fragrances and accessories, and the sixth floor was reserved for store offices and storage. From the front of the store, the elevators were located straight ahead, in the center of the building, with a wide staircase winding around the central shaft.

As she made her way through the maze of merchandise, Augusta's flashlight beam fell on damp and stinking sofas, chairs, and love seats, dusty and grimy dining room sets and grandfather clocks, and soggy art prints curling behind glass.

She walked through the bedding section, past a row of half-beds arranged along a partition, decorated with comforters, sheets, and pillows, with fake windows on the partition framed by curtains to match the blankets and sheet sets. It all looked to have been well-gnawed by mice and rats; cotton batting spewed from pillows and comforters.

Next, the items for sale parted around the elevator and staircase, with appliances, patchy with rust, to the left, and bath goods to the right. She glanced toward the right to see stacks of towels speckled with fungus and a clawfoot bathtub filled with glass globes like large bubbles and another clear plastic mannequin like those in the windows up front, posed as if luxuriating in a bubble bath. Small square shelves like boxes turned on their sides, rose up behind, displaying soap dishes, toothbrush holders, and all the other accessories the stylish bathroom demanded, all draped in dusty cobwebs.

She turned away as the silent stench pressed down on her.

There were two elevators, two pairs of antique bronze doors slowly oxidizing blue-green. Potted palm trees, long dead, flanked each pair of doors; one had uprooted itself and fallen to lean on another, its fronds hanging down like scraps of moldy leather.

Augusta suppressed a shudder and started up the stairs.

At the second floor, the design of the staircase forced her to step off, onto the sales floor, and circle around the elevators to the stairs leading upward again. Teddy bears of all sizes clustered near the stairs as though they had gathered to watch, and all of them bled stuffing from wounds gnawed open by rodents.

Their eyes, some made of buttons, others of marbles, glittered under a layer of dust. They sat on wooden pedestals painted to look like the blocks a child would play with. As Augusta walked away, she turned to keep her eyes on them. The skin between her shoulder blades seemed to be trying to crawl in a dozen different directions at once.

The teddy bears, and the displays of toys stacked in shadows behind them, were replaced by racks of tiny dresses. Baby girls' dresses of moth-eaten velvet and lace., and not far away on a pedestal stood another mannequin, clear plastic like all the others, but tiny, and modeling a little girl's long-sleeved dress.

She turned away from it, found the bears' watchful button eyes upon her again, and started up the stairs to the third floor.

A trio of clear plastic mannequins greeted her at the top, wearing long, brightly patterned dresses and matching jackets, now faded and moldy. They held their arms above their heads in someone's idea of an artistic pose, with long strings of pearls looped and draped like a garland, drooping from wrist to wrist to wrist. Jewelry displayed in little black velvet cases and bottles of perfume stood on squat, fancy plaster columns spotted with black mildew and patches of fuzzy mold. As she circled the elevator shaft, passing by the dulled bronze doors, there were racks of dresses hanging limp and dusty and draped with ropy cobwebs. Augusta thought of a closet thrown wide on a woman's clothes, trying to choose a dress for that woman to be buried in.

It still wasn't as bad as the teddy bears, she thought. Or the little girl mannequin in her dress. That made her think of Kitty, and made her think that none of this needed to have happened. None of it. If she had just...

Too much to think about, and she couldn't let it distract her. Too much to do, and she was so close to seeing this whole horrible mess turn back on itself, so close to wrapping her arms around her perfect, warm, alive little girl, so close to taking her home.

So close. So damned close...

At the top of the stairs on the fourth floor was a long, low counter with mannequin legs cut off at mid-calf modeling shoes and socks, sandals, and high-heeled shoes and pantyhose.

A new pair of socks would feel good about now, she thought as she stepped onto the floor and circled around the elevators. Shoes gave way to a dozen bicycles of various colors posed in a row. Immediately, she wondered how much easier it would be to navigate Silent Hill by bike; she inspected the display only to find each bicycle was chained to the mount that kept it upright.

She grumbled absently, then skirted the display and began to weave through the stacks and shelves of items behind.

Two longs shelves stocked with everything one might need for tennis, with an aisle running between them; they held racquets, boxed kits for setting up tennis nets, cans of balls, duffle bags in every color, wristbands, an entire line of videos entitled _"Play Better Tennis Now!"_and much more.

Dust drifted through the beam of her flashlight and the cobwebs hanging in strings from the merchandise danced in the air as she passed. Guns and hunting supplies would lie at the back of the store, in locked glass cabinets lined up along the wall where doors here and there would open into the fourth floor stockroom.

The shelves broke for a cross aisle, and a short pedestal where two mannequins posed in dusty tennis apparel. Beyond was another long aisle between shelves holding enough racquetball supplies to line the aisle halfway along one side, and racks of skateboards, along with kneepads, helmets, elbow pads, and more lining the remainder. _Make it Yours – Customize Your Board Today!_, said a sign. Past another aisle there were shelves of inline skates. Another sign advised that these skates were for display only. _Ask an associate for assistance_.

Then came the wall, lined with sturdy glass cabinets behind a narrow aisle and waist-high glass cases filled with ammunition. _No Customers Allowed Behind the Counter_, said a sign, which added, _Ask an associate for assistance_.

Jackpot. She studied the guns lined up behind the grimy glass and saw hunting rifles, shotguns, and handguns. A rifle or a shotgun would be more powerful than her pistol, but would be heavier and slower. That, and if she could find hollowpoint ammunition, she would not only be able to fire the semiautomatic as fast she could pull the trigger, but the bullets would do an admirable amount of damage. It had only taken two to blow the head off the Joseph-thing in the library.

Too bad I can't get my hands on a machine gun, she thought. That and a belt of bullets a mile long. I'd turn Joseph into bloody pink mist.

Rifle? Shotgun? She debated, chewing her lip. Too slow, too bulky, she finally decided. She wanted to stuff her backpack with bullets, and if she had to split the space with shotgun shells...

Augusta began to inspect the glass cases. There were bullets of all calibers, copper jacketed and steel jacketed. As she worked her way from left to right, the caliber increased, until here were the .45-caliber bullets. Would there be hollowpoint ammunition? Was that even legal in Illinois?

Apparently it was, or had been in 1999. There were several boxes beneath the grimy glass. Augusta wiped the dust away with her hand to check again – .45-caliber hollowpoint ammunition from various manufacturers, including Ruger itself. Exactly what she was looking for. She looked up, glancing around the rotting store lit only by her flashlight and what weak light could filter in from far off windows, and noticed holsters displayed nearby and remembered she needed one. Then she looked back down at the glass case full of bullets.

She used the handle to break the glass, and winced as thunderous, echoing bangs shot out through the store. After jabbing downward twice, like a spear, the glass counter top cracked. Several more hard jabs and it cracked again. She checked the tiny foam rubber pad at the handle tip, saw no slivers of glass embedded that would cut her hands, then grabbed the handle and hit the glass with the blade as though trying to dig through it. Finally it split into thick, jagged plates and fell in on itself with a crash.

After nudging broken glass aside with the shovel blade, she reached in carefully and lifted out as many boxes of bullets as she could reach. The cabinet had kept the moisture out over the years; when she opened a box she saw the copper jackets had oxidized and dulled, but hadn't corroded. The boxes themselves were still crisp and sturdy. She swung the backpack around, unzipped and pulled out the pistol, reloaded and set it on the counter nearby, then stuffed as many boxes of bullets in as she could carry, taking care to remove the blue rose, then replace in carefully when she was finished. It seemed somehow important to protect it as much as she possibly could.

When she had zipped up her backpack and swung it around, she straightened and marveled at the added weight. She felt fortified, and carried four hundred bullets in her backpack, at fifty per box. That and the seven loaded in the gun, she thought as she picked it up, then headed for the holsters nearby, displayed on clear plastic mannequin parts, from torsos to ankles.

A sign advised that more styles were available, and that an associate would be happy to help one choose the best holster available. From those displayed though, Augusta could choose from leather or sturdy canvas, and from models that would hold a gun safely in place almost anywhere, from the ankle to the thigh to shoulder holsters that kept the gun safe and snug beneath one arm. Augusta picked canvas because the leather holsters were hairy with mold. The canvas holsters were filthy as well, but she was able to shake most of the grime from them, then slipped off her backpack and flashlight and fumbled with the holster until she was reasonably sure she wore it correctly. She wrestled her backpack into place, replaced the flashlight strap around her neck, then put the Ruger in the holster and clipped the pocket that held it shut.

She raised her arms over her head experimentally and discovered that between the two of them, the backpack straps and the holster looping in a figure-eight over her shoulders and crossing high up on her back just below the nape of her neck, the straps of leather and canvas snapped closed like a vise and squeezed hard enough to bruise.

It's a small price to pay, I think, for this gun not going off in my pocket and taking off a leg. It really doesn't restrict my arms enough to notice, so it isn't all that bad.

"Alrighty," she said quietly to herself, "Time to go." And she passed back through the skateboards and accouterments of racquetball and tennis to the stairs and the severed mannequin feet modeling shoes.

The dusty ladies in their dresses, draped in a rope of pearls still stood guard on the third floor, and the little girl mannequin and decrepit teddy bears still clustered near the landing on the second floor.

But something was very different on the first floor.

Her first clue was the smell. There was still the odor of a place decaying in mist, but it was now mixed with sweat and perfume and hairspray – the faintest hints lingering in the air.

She grabbed for her gun, fumbled with it until the pocket popped open and she snatched it out, thumbed the safety, and was ready to fire at the first thing that moved.

Vertigo struck, the same sickening, reeling feel that had assaulted her on the walk down the Nathan Avenue causeway from the Wiltse Hill Tunnel into South Vale. She sank to her knees with a nauseated groan, dropping the shovel as everything around her changed at once – lights snapped on, the veil of dust and cobwebs lifted and vanished, mold and mildew shrank away into pinpoints and then nothing at all, and the goods around her shifted, changed place and changed shape. Couches became recliners and loveseats became easy chairs, glass-topped dining tables replaced wooden tables, and wooden tables replaced glass-topped tables. In the bedding section, patterned Venetian blinds replaced the curtains on display at every fake window, and the bedding itself on the little half-beds changed patterns as the gnawed holes sewed themselves shut. In appliances, the microwaves and ranges and refrigerators shuffled in place and shed their rust and changed colors.

The potted palm trees snapped to attention, sprang to life, then shrank in size. The verdigris that stained the elevator doors disappeared. Sale posters and banners dropped from the ceiling and swung lazily in place. The floors, old red and black tiles, suddenly shone. The odors grew stronger and stronger, and joining them was the smell of cleaning chemicals and newness.

Then the silence was split by a murmur, rising and falling, that of a great many people in a single large space, talking amongst themselves. Augusta stayed on her knees, gasping.

The floor was littered with book bags, textbooks, and papers. The murmuring went on, the sound of many people alarmed and upset.

As the nausea broke and drifted apart like a noxious cloud, she reached down and picked up the nearest paper. Someone's homework or a test. _Biology – Mr. Collins_, written in the upper left and the date in the upper right.

_February 19, 1994._

Oh, Jesus... Not again. The sounds went on, rolling over themselves. It sounded like people crying and yelling, other voices comforting and shushing, the occasional authoritative voice shouting over the din that nobody was the leave the store and that everybody was to stay _away_ from the doors and windows.

"_No, you can't, goddamn it!" _a man's voice emphasized. _"You'll stay in here with the rest of them, do you hear me?"_

More wailing. Adult voices near panic. Younger voices crying and screaming – some from alarm, others from pain.

"_He killed them, I saw it!"_ wept a teenage girl's voice nearby.

"_It hurts... Oh, Jesus God it hurts..."_ a boy groaned.

"_Oh, Jesus, oh, God... Oh, God this can't be happening. Oh, Jesus..." _a woman's voice.

"_ARE WE SAFE IN HERE? TELL ME, ARE WE SAFE IN HERE?" _a man, roaring.

School books and homework and backpacks scattered on the floor... Teenaged girls and teenaged boys weeping and screaming and yelling to one another. Men and women shouting in alarm.

_Biology – Mr. Collins February 19, 1994_

_1.) Explain photosynthesis in your own words._

_Photosynthesis is the process where plants..._

Augusta dropped the paper, grabbed the shovel, and shot to her feet. She knew what was going on.

"_Are you okay? Did he hit you anywhere? Is that blood yours?"_

She shook her head and forced away the last shreds of nausea.

"_MY SON IS OVER THERE!! IS HE HERE? IS HE STILL THERE?"_

This was the furniture department, full of fake living rooms and dining rooms, basking in sudden spotlights. The merchandise was new and clean... and was ten years old.

"_What's going on? What's happening?"_

She ran past the elevators and the stairs, past the clawfoot tub, no longer filled with glass globes and a relaxing mannequin. Instead towels in various colors were draped over the edge in a rainbow display.

"_How many people got shot? Are there people still inside?"_

More towels on a low, broad table. They were stacked in columns of various heights, taller and shorter, a spectrum of colors, with a sign reading, _Treat Yourself To A Warm Bath And A Warm Bed This Winter! It's The Berkowitz's Bath and Bedding Sale!_

"_Oh, Christ, you're bleeding... Put pressure on it. Here, let me get a towel. Just lay still."_

Bath goods gave way to exercise machines. Treadmills, rowing machines, exercise bikes...

"_Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, he's still alive. Oh my God you can see his brain, he's still alive... Oh my God..."_

A young man lay on the floor in the middle of the aisle ahead, with a sleek gas range on one side of the aisle across from a row of excercycles on the other beneath a sign, dotted with elaborate drawings of snowflakes and suggesting, _Shed Those Winter Pounds!_ that hung from the ceiling.

Augusta holstered her gun, dropped to her knees and lay the shovel aside, and bent over the boy on the floor. He couldn't possibly be older than sixteen or seventeen. A high schooler. A junior, maybe a senior.

She could indeed see his brain. His eyes opened and closed, and his mouth opened and closed around a froth of blood. Twin trickles of blood wandered away from his nostrils and down his face. A large patch of the left side of his skull was missing, peeled back but still attached to a flap of scalp and hair. The brain tissue bulging from the hole looked wet and gray and fragile. Blood had pooled on the tiles where his head lay.

"Hurts," he choked as his eyes found Augusta's. "Hurts. Help."

"Oh, honey..." Augusta gasped. She didn't know what to do.

He was another ghost, like Miriam and Billy Locane and Deanna Blackwell... He had to be. He had to be, and she knew what had happened to him. The only way she could help him would be to hunt down his murderer, his tormentor. That had helped the Locane children and the people on the Little Baroness. That had set them free.

"Hurts." Tears spilled from his eyes. "Help. Please."

There was nothing else she could do. She struggled with her backpack, which caught on the holster, until she could unzip the front pocket and take out the bottle of Advil.

She opened it and poured the pills into her hand.

"Here. This will help. Take these, okay?" I hope it helps. Nothing can help this.

He opened his mouth, and she poured in the pills. He swallowed them, along with a mouthful of his own blood.

"There... that'll start to work in a little bit. Just hold on til it starts to help." Please keep it down, don't choke, don't throw it back up...

Was there anything else? She strained, reaching to run her fingers through the items inside the front pocket. The crushed box of Band-Aids, the tube of Neosporin, eyedrops, either a lipstick or Chapstick... nothing else that would be helpful. She threw the empty bottle aside.

"Close your eyes and just lay still til it stops hurting," she said and the boy closed his eyes. She picked up the shovel and stood, looking for anyone else nearby, eyes wide, lips set in a thin, determined line.

There was another low table stacked with merchandise nearby, toasters displayed on rising tiers, some of shiny steel, others a snowy white... A smear of blood decorated the side of one white toaster. A teenage girl who looked younger than the boy on the floor was slumped against the table. She had been shot in the neck.

Augusta ran to her, knelt and looked into her eyes, a deep and beautiful blue that rolled from side to side before finally locking onto Augusta's.

The girl opened and closed her mouth. Blood trickled from a corner.

"I can't feel anything," she rasped, "I can't move anything."

Paralyzed. Shot in the neck and paralyzed.

Every time she opened her mouth, Augusta heard a wet click, the sound of her choking.

"Is the ambulance going to be here soon?" the girl asked.

"Yes. Just hold on til it gets here." The ambulance had never arrived, and never would. This girl had been dead for ten years. She must have bled out, right here on the floor of the appliances department at Berkowitz's.

"Close your eyes and rest, okay? Wait for the ambulance. I need to see if anyone else is hurt."

She stood. There were other people hurt. Plenty of them. Augusta knew what this was.


	29. Becky Taylor's bad mood

On Thursday, February 19, 1994, Becky Taylor, a fourteen-year-old freshman at Silent Hill High School, was not present for her first period class, English, which began at 8:05 AM. She was not present for second period, Civics, which started at 9:10, or third period, Physical Education, beginning at 10:15.

Lunch period for freshmen and sophomores began at 11:20, while juniors and seniors ate at 12:25. Becky arrived at school at 11:44, with a loaded double-barrel shotgun, two loaded automatic pistols, and her pockets and backpack stuffed full of ammunition.

Her first stop was Mrs. Ellroy's Advanced Placement English class. Silent Hill High School was a beautiful old castle of brick erected in 1925, and while it had been repeatedly modernized, the school still retained some of the quirks expected of an older building. Mrs. Ellroy's classroom was home to such a quirk: it tended to become uncomfortably warm and stuffy in the winter, whenever the building's central air was rumbling and growling in an effort to keep out the cold. Because of this, Mrs. Ellroy usually left her door open to allow the heat from the room to escape into the hallway.

Humming to herself, with a slight smile on her face, Becky stopped at Mrs. Ellroy's open door, listened for a moment to a lecture about the symbolism present in T.S. Eliot's _The Wasteland, _then cocked her shotgun and fired indiscriminately into the room. Mrs. Ellroy died immediately, as half of her head flew into bits of bone and tissue and an explosion of bloody droplets. A girl named Adamina Katz was injured by lead pellets of shot, as was another girl nearby named Stephanie Bachman. Becky shot again and a boy named Abel Levin lost an arm.

The panic was immediate in Mrs. Ellroy's class, and instantly doors up and down the hall were being thrown open by teachers investigating the noise. Becky spun, raised a pistol, and fired, and the French teacher, Richard Lindsey, missed a shot to the chest by nothing more than luck. The bullet pierced a nearby locker and ricocheted inside a dozen times with a sound like something demanding to be let out.

The screams began. With the pistol raised, Becky neatly broke the shotgun, held it to her body with her arm as she pulled two more shells from the pocket of her jeans, and readied the gun to fire again. She began to fire the pistol down the hall, not aiming at anyone. She just liked the sound.

In Mrs. Ellroy's class, the students were divided. Some ran for the windows, threw them open and scrambled out to drop six feet into a holly hedge. Others ran for the door, despite Becky standing calm and immobile in the doorway. Still others ran to Mrs. Ellroy, crumpled beside the overhead projector on a tall metal cart on wheels. The eye that remained stared up at them, but didn't see.

Mr. Lindsey slammed and locked his door, and ordered every student in the class away from the door and its large square glass partition. Further up the hall, the door to the German classroom burst open and the teacher, "Frau" Harris leapt into the hall and screamed at the sight of Becky. As she tried to turn and run back into the safety of her classroom, she was shoved back out by two football players fighting one another in a panic to flee the building. Frau Harris fell to the floor as Becky took careful aim at the doorway with the shotgun, fired, and killed one football player and sprayed the other with shot. Other students in the German class followed those of Mrs. Ellroy in running to the windows and leaping out into the hedge below.

Becky ducked into a nearby bathroom – the girls' bathroom because the boys' bathroom was usually much dirtier and smelled much worse – reloaded her pistol and shotgun, and waited a moment as the hallway outside began to fill with panicked students and teachers shouting at them to get back in the classroom and shut the doors.

Few listened, and when Becky felt the hall was full enough, she emerged and began shooting into the crowd, which stampeded clumsily down the hall away from her. Students and teachers were shoved into lockers and walls, bounced off and stumbled back into the crowd. Some fell, and were trampled. A girl took a pistol shot to the back, and watched the bullet burst from her chest. It had missed her heart by less than an inch. Adrenaline numbed the wound and she stayed on her feet, pushing and shoving the people ahead.

Windows in classrooms along the hall were thrown up and students began to pour out of the school into the street, and onto the sidewalk that ran behind the main school building and the gymnasium, auditorium, and library. Mr. Lindsey, having ordered his class out the windows, began leading his students, and anyone else who would follow, away from the school and toward Berkowitz's Department Store, which loomed behind its parking lot across Ferris Street. Once inside the store, everyone could take shelter away from the rear entrance and its glass doors – there were no windows along the first floor at the rear of the store building.

Frau Harris, having followed her students out the classroom windows, saw students frozen by fear and shock clustering on the sidewalk, and started gathering any who would listen to her, and herding them toward the department store as well. A boy whose collarbone had been shattered by a bullet leaned heavily on her, his right arm draped around her neck. Between his neck and his left arm, blood spurted from a mush of bone chips and muscle, onto his clothes and onto Frau Harris's light blue dress.

Silent Hill High School stood three stories high, and was shaped like a long, fat letter I. Language classes filled half of the first floor, with offices and the school cafeteria occupying the remainder. Stairwells were located at either end of the building, and at the north side of the building was an elevator that was only to be used by teachers, and students who were not physically able to climb the stairs. Just last year, however, seniors, as part of their package of privileges, had been allowed to use the elevator as well.

Students still inside the school were fleeing toward the north end of the building.

On the second floor, the gunshots were muffled to nothing more than sharp thumps, but the sound was enough to clench a fist around every teacher's attention.

Someone pulled a fire alarm. Becky walked calmly down the hall toward the cafeteria, passing the language classes – French, Spanish, German, Japanese, and all five English classrooms.

On the second floor, home to science, math, history, and all the civics courses, some teachers buzzed the office. Others decided the fire alarm was more important to heed than the mysterious muffled thumps. They emptied their classrooms and led their students toward the stairs. Some seniors, in a panic, ran instead for the elevator, slammed into one another and began to crush against the doors.

On the third floor, where the fine arts, business, computer, home economics, and elective courses were located, at the sound of the fire alarm, teachers who had not heard the thumps on the first floor gathered their students and led them in a march toward the stairs. A few seniors bolted for the elevator but were ordered away by Mr. Rendell, the business teacher, who had a voice like an exploding bomb.

A long, straight hallway ran from end to end on each floor of the school, with an entrance at each end. Students and teachers from the second floor began to pour from the rear stairwell, into the first floor hall. Becky turned and calmly fired her pistol, not wanting to waste her shotgun shells on the space between herself and the far end of the hall. Mrs. Koontz, a history teacher, was shot in the stomach.

The students, suddenly screaming, shoving one another aside in a terror to get out the doors, instead began to pile up.

On the first floor, the hall ended at the door to the cafeteria and its kitchen, which lay ahead beyond the school offices. The elevator, north staircase, and north entrance to the school were located inside the cafeteria.

A member of the wrestling team tried to take advantage of Becky's turned back and rushed forward from the crowd bunching at the cafeteria doors, to tackle her. Becky turned – almost elegantly, as though she were dancing – and shot him in the face from no more than a few feet away. The wrestler fell down dead, his head reduced to fragments.

Becky encountered the principal and his secretary as they hurried out of their office, and raised her shotgun, and both were peppered with shot. In another office, the guidance counselor screamed and slammed her door on the horror in the hallway, then shoved a heavy filing cabinet against the door to barricade herself and the school registrar inside. Other administrators ran to their office windows, hurled them open, and jumped out.

Becky stepped over the principal, playing dead, and his secretary, mewling in pain on the floor, and into the principal's office to reload, then emerged and hurried to the cafeteria. What with the fire alarm, the people inside had probably all run out the north entrance already. If there was no one to shoot still inside, she decided she would climb the stairs to the second floor and search for anyone upstairs.

She walked calmly to the cafeteria doors and yanked them open...

Becky Taylor methodically prowled through Silent Hill High School, floor by floor, hall by hall, and room by room. Nine students, including two who had been dragged to safety across Ferris Street and through the rear entrance of Berkowitz's Department Store, and two teachers died. Eighty-one students, eight teachers, and the principal and his secretary were injured.

The record for deaths held until the apocalyptic massacre at Columbine High School in April, 1999. The record for injuries was never broken. Becky at last barricaded herself in the home economics kitchen on the third floor, where a class had just baked cookies. She shot through the windows at students and teachers running from the gymnasium, auditorium, and library behind the main school building, and then at police officers, all the while eating cookies, until she ran out of ammunition. She then threw her guns through the broken window, took from her backpack a large white sheet on which she had written _I SURRENDER!_ in large letters with a magic marker, and hung it from the windowsill.

She waited for police to reach her, was arrested quietly by officer Guillermo Gucci of the Silent Hill Police Department, and when later asked why she had done it, responded simply, "I was in a bad mood."

Eleven dead of gunshot wounds. Ninety-one injured from bullet wounds, from being crushed against walls and doors, from being trampled, and one from falling down the stairs between the third and second floors.

"I was in a bad mood."

Two days later, Becky Taylor sheared off her ears as she forced her head through the bars of her cell in the Silent Hill Police Department's jail, then twisted suddenly and violently once to the left, and broke her neck.

I was in a bad mood.

Augusta remembered there had been a public outcry reported on the national news when wearing t-shirts bearing that slogan became all the rage at dance clubs in Chicago and St. Louis.

When she stepped through the rear doors of Berkowitz's Department Store and into its parking lot, she jumped at the sudden silence and felt the shovel handle bounce on her shoulder. As the glass doors swung slowly closed behind her, the din inside ceased – all the screaming, wailing, crying, pleading, and shouting sealed away, leaving her alone in the softly falling snowflakes and silent rolling fog.

The mist was thick enough to blot out the red brick bulk of Silent Hill High School rearing up across Ferris Street from the block that Berkowitz's filled with its parking lot and store.

The school filled the next block up as well, she realized. Though south of Massey Street, the blocks that fronted Pickton Street and the Illiniwak River were mostly very narrow, most of the blocks all along Ferris Street were as wide as two of the blocks along Pickton. The high school filled an entire large block, and from where Augusta stood, the old main building was to the right, and the gymnasium, library, and auditorium to the left, one behind the other.

Augusta looked to her left to see fog sighing softly over a handful of cars left behind in the lot. Hilley Street ran between Pickton and Ferris for only that single block. Across Schaefer, the next street up from Hilley, was what had once been one of the large open squares that were the soul of East Silent Hill. At some point, it too had been claimed by the school, and was home to the Silent Hill High School football field, soccer field, and baseball diamond.

Ten years ago, Becky Taylor had never left the main school building. She worked her way from the first floor to third, and shot from the third floor home economics kitchen at anyone who tried to leave the gym and library.

Augusta thought back, dredging up details. The national news media had swarmed Silent Hill and the shooting held America's attention for a full week.

She remembered. Nobody died in the auditorium, gym, or the library. Students from the school bolted across Ferris Street for the safety of Berkowitz's Department Store. Most students in the auditorium, library, and gym, fleeing bullets raining through the large windows of all three buildings, had run across Schaefer Avenue and huddled on the playing fields.

Except for the two who had died inside the store, Becky Taylor and her victims would almost certainly be inside the main school building, Augusta decided.

She wondered what it would take to kill Becky Taylor. Walter Sullivan wouldn't die until she had prayed and a red devil had sprung up to drag him into the depths of a pool of his own blood. Joshua Blackwell lived with his heart cut in two, until she had scooped up his severed head and tossed it into an oven. As far as she knew, the Joseph-thing was _still_ alive and by now might have pulled the two crushed halves of its body out from beneath the heavy steel shelf at the library.

Weeping Mary couldn't be killed, and she only had a hunch that Joseph could die.

God only knew. Augusta studied the parking lot. Four cars that she could see, scattered here and there, and a couple of dark shapes in the distance that might be more. Large trees lines the edges, along Hilley Street to the left, Ramsey Avenue to the right, and Ferris Street at the far end of the lot, straight ahead. She jogged to the left, to the trees along Hilley Street. Between them and the trees in their planting squares alongside the street, the sidewalk was little more than a tunnel.

In the summer it had been beautiful.

If Becky Taylor was still searching with dead eyes for someone to shoot, the trees arching over the sidewalk along Hilley Street provided excellent cover with their interlocking branches. Augusta stepped out between two trees and onto the sidewalk, creeping along Hilley Street toward the school, listening. She would hear gunshots easily but for anything more subtle, such as the cocking of a shotgun, she would have to be careful.

What if Becky Taylor was somehow able to escape the school and roam free? Walter Sullivan had apparently been able to walk back and forth between the building that had housed Locane's Grocery, and his basement apartment at Suttcliffe Place.

But he had done that in life. Calm down. Part of the torture of Billy Locane had been the horrible, interminable waiting for the raping to begin again and again. Becky Taylor never left the school.

A shot cracked through the air. Augusta bit back a squeal as she dropped to her knees. She hadn't heard the bullet hit anything, hadn't seen it hit anything.

She waited, heard nothing, then slid the shovel handle down her back beneath the backpack, which held it in place with the blade pressing against her neck. She began to crawl on hands and knees along the sidewalk.

In their growth, the trees' roots had buckled the sidewalk and it rose and fell like frozen ripples. It was cold and slick, and water dripped from the branches above as snowflakes melted there.

Another gunshot, and again it didn't seem to hit anything nearby.

Another few broken squares of sidewalk, another gunshot. A shotgun blast. Augusta froze, and counted silently to herself until she heard another shot. Three seconds. She waited and counted again. Three seconds. Very faintly, she heard a sound that might have been a bullet ricocheting off metal.

She crawled on. Ahead, the street corner was clear of trees. Exposed. Augusta stopped, waited a moment and slid the shovel out from beneath the backpack, then climbed to her feet and snuck ahead, hugging tree trunks. The gunshots resounded. At the last tree before the corner, Augusta clutched the trunk and looked ahead. The sidewalk and street signs looked unharmed – no pits in the sidewalk where a bullet would have struck, no puckered holes in the signs where bullets would have passed through.

Silent Hill High School rose up across Ferris Street in rust-red brick. The gym next door to the main school building was newer, and was built of brick the color of dirty phlegm.

There was the Ferris Street entrance, on the south end of the fat letter I. On the second and third floors above the wide set of double doors were large windows that seemed to have all their glass intact – which meant Becky had not shot them out. There were smaller windows to the right and left, in sets one above the other. That would be the stairwell and bathrooms.

Another shotgun blast. They seemed to be coming from the rear of the main school building, as though Becky were still barricaded inside the third floor home economics kitchen, still shooting at the gym and library and auditorium. Augusta reached for her pistol and pulled it from its holster, said a prayer, and darted across the street and up a set of broad cement steps to the south entrance of Silent Hill High School, where she set the shovel to lean against the wall and dropped to a crouch beside the doors.

Another gunshot from the rear of the building upstairs.

The doors were made of thick steel and each had a square window threaded through with wire mesh and a handle and thumb-bolt. Augusta carefully reached for one from her hiding spot, careful to avoid the window, just in case. The left-hand door was locked. The thumb-bolt refused to give and rattled in place with an indifferent metallic click.

She reached farther and found the door to the right unlocked.

Another gunshot, still from upstairs.

The door opened, amazingly, silently. Still crouching, Augusta pulled it open, and risked a peek inside with her flashlight, which she still wore around her neck. Decay. An old tired building swelling and crumbling in relentless mist.

She stood and pulled open the doors and entered. Becky Taylor was still upstairs.

She stepped inside.

The crust of age and rot, the smell of dampness, mold, and mildew, was ripped away like a droplet of blood in a whirlpool. Fluorescent lights buzzed to life overhead. Rust evaporated. Warped, splintered wood healed itself.

Scarlet splashes of blood stood out on the floor and walls amid a storm of scattered papers, books, and backpacks.


	30. Nine private hells

Augusta's heart immediately began to thrum in her chest. Everything had changed, and Becky would notice. She would thunder down the stairs any moment now, shotgun booming, which meant Augusta had to hide.

The stairwell was to her left, a pair of restrooms on her right. She ran for the bathrooms, instinctively toward the women's room, stopped herself, chose the men's room. She remembered, vaguely, that Becky Taylor had first stopped to reload her guns in the girls bathroom. Neither had a door, but rather a tile wall that blocked the view from the hallway. She bolted through the doorway, around the wall, and into the bathroom, where sinks lined up beneath mirrors to her left, with a row of urinals between steel partitions standing along the wall beyond them. Toilets filled a row of stalls to the right. She chose one, hurried inside and closed the stall door behind her, then climbed up on the toilet to wait, careful that nothing – a shoelace, or the sweatshirt tied around her waist – hung down where it could be seen in the gap between the floor and the stall door.

A sturdy steel pole was bolted to the stall wall to her right. She gripped it, and reached forward with her left hand to lock the stall door. The lock clicked terribly loudly.

The gun rode snug in the holster beneath her left arm. Augusta reached for it, bracing herself with her left arm against the wall, and tugged it free. Any minute now... Becky would hustle down the stairs, shooting, and she would search the bathrooms first. She might search the ladies room first, or maybe not, but either way, when she stormed into the mens room she would kick the stall doors open one by one, and when she kicked the door to this stall, and it didn't fly inward, Augusta would empty her gun through the door before Becky had time to raise up her weapon and shoot.

Maybe. Augusta waited. Warmth spilled from a vent overhead. Water dripped in a sink. The bathroom smelled of stale piss and unflushed toilets brimming with shit. There were hints of cigarette smoke and cologne, pungent cleaning chemicals, and years' accumulations of dead farts.

She looked down. Old tiles. Hexagonal, some of them cracked.

A taut wire of dread suddenly snapped inside her, whipsawing and singing an ugly note like a broken guitar string. Her head jerked upward, her mouth falling open.

Her shovel. She didn't have her shovel. She had left it outside leaning against the wall, when she had first dropped down to a crouch beneath the windows in each door. Just in case Becky might see her through the wire mesh glass and shoot to kill.

Left it leaning against the wall. Hadn't picked it back up.

Shit. How do you not notice you left behind something as big as a shovel?

Irritation flared. She would have to go back outside to get it. But what if Becky saw her leaving? What if Becky was coming down the stairs right now? What if Becky were right outside the bathroom door, preparing to step inside in just another split-second...

She was furious with herself – leaving a _weapon_ behind in a place like this. Stupid. She needed every one of her _weapons_. But, she reasoned... I still have my gun, and that's got a lot more stopping power than a shovel.

You still have your gun.

Should I save my bullets for Joseph?

You have four hundred of the damn things. You can spare a few. You can spare a lot. You were going to shoot the hell out of Becky Taylor before you realized you left the shovel outside. If nothing else, you can go back to Berkowitz's and get some more.

The bathroom was still thick with unpleasant odors and silence. Silence. Becky Taylor hadn't entered, wasn't shooting in the hall outside.

Well, what now?

A thought flitted across Augusta's mind: maybe the school always looked like this for Becky Taylor, and so maybe she hadn't noticed when Augusta came inside.

Maybe it _did_. Miriam Locane had seen her parents' grocery store where a TCBY stood on Nathan Avenue. And so, maybe for Becky Taylor, the florescent lights forever burned and the halls were always strewn with papers, books, and bags dropped by panicked students, and were endlessly dripping with the blood of the wounded.

Which meant maybe Augusta could, unnoticed, quietly sneak through the doors, grab the shovel, then come back and hunt Becky down.

She stepped down, carefully unlocked the stall door, and opened it a crack to peek out. Nothing. An empty bathroom much abused by teenage boys. She stepped out, crept along the stalls to the wall, peered around it toward the doorway, and saw the hall outside and the stairs across the hall.

Becky was nowhere to be seen. Augusta headed for the door, reached the doorway and looked out carefully, just in case, then stepped out and turned toward the entrance. Gun or not, she would feel much safer with another weapon. _Her_ other weapon.

She jolted as if slapped. The doors at the end of the hall, the doors that led outside, were blocked by chains that drooped from the weight of heavy padlocks. Chains. So many that it seemed a wall had been woven of them across the doorway. Augusta stared, agape, then holstered the gun and ran forward, grabbed a rope of metal links and gave an experimental tug. It rattled, but nothing more.

Well, this just sucks, her mind noted grumpily. I can't go outside, probably not until I've killed this wretched bitch from hell, and that being the case, I guess I'll have to kill her with my gun. That will set her victims free and then I'll go outside and get the shovel, and go kill Joseph and maybe then I'll _finally_ be able to take Kitty and go home.

Home. Augusta felt a rush of heat that gave way to prickles of sweat as she wiped her wrist across her forehead and thought, this isn't me. Killing people – but they're already dead. Revenge for a little girl who's dead but alive, against a man who's dead too. This isn't me. Is any of this really happening? Am I really here?

Is anything ever going to make sense again?

This is going to make me lose my mind. They'll put me in the state mental hospital at Broughton and I'll spend the rest of my life in a straitjacket, chewing at the straps and trying to beat myself to death against the walls. I've thought I've gone insane two or three times already today.

And she wondered if she would be thinking any of this if she had not forgotten the goddamn shovel outside.

In the hallway, she was exposed, so she hurried back to the bathroom and around the tile wall where she leaned against the cool ceramic and chewed her lip while listening for Becky. She needed a plan.

Becky Taylor would be upstairs, and if she wasn't coming down, Augusta would have to go up to her. But first, she thought, I'll need something I could use to lure her out. A distraction – it would be handy to have something she could use to distract Becky. Something that would give her an advantage – something she could use to lure Becky into a trap or could use to buy at least a little time if Becky surprised her and there was no place to run.

A fire extinguisher hung from a hook on the wall nearby. Augusta stared at it, then grabbed it, thinking, _perfect_. Instant smokescreen. An instant way to hide. She studied the instructions – pull a pin, clutch the grips together in her fist, and there was even a little metal ring that could be slipped around the handles to hold them together. Wonderful. She could set the damn thing and run away, and it would still fume and spew and mist out behind her. Best of all, there would be more! If she used one up, there would be another just down the hall.

But there was still a monster upstairs with a gun, and August realized she knew where Becky would be – the home economics kitchen where she had made her last stand, probably – but she didn't know where on the third floor that would be. She needed a map.

When she had attended Hot Springs High School, she remembered, every year each student was issued a student handbook that listed school rules, resources, and all the teachers' names, with a map on the inside back cover. Maybe Silent Hill High School... She glanced around the wall, through the doorway at the empty stairwell across the hall. Still no trace of Becky, who must either be oblivious or somehow unable to come to Augusta.

Or possibly very stealthy. Augusta set the fire extinguisher on the floor, snuck to the door, checked the hall again, then looked down at the papers and books on the hall floor.

She saw it riding the crest of a wave of books and papers spilling out of a backpack nearby. It looked as though it had been stuffed in the backpack since the school year began in September, and was wrinkled, its cover torn, and stained by several months of jostling in a bag against uncapped pens and loose pencils. But there, unmistakable, was an image of the Silent Hill Sentinel, the school mascot.

_Silent Hill High School Student Guide – 1993-1994_

And beneath, _"SHHS: Where Excellence Stands Guard."_

Augusta stepped out, knelt and took the student handbook, then ducked back into the bathroom. Flipping through, searching for a school map, she found it as it had been at Hot Springs High, on the inside back cover, with all three floors diagramed in a vertical row.

She studied the third floor. Typing, computer programming, art, band, chorus, dance... Home economics, a little less than halfway along the third floor hall on the west side of the building. The problem was that unless doors to other classrooms where unlocked, there was no place to hide, and no shelter in the third floor hall. Like the other halls, it ran straight as a string from north to south.

It wouldn't be wise to trap Becky Taylor in a corner, because she had been shooting continually for ten years and wouldn't be any closer to running out of ammunition now than then.

There were four spots along the wall of each hallway marked with tiny x's inside circles. More fire extinguishers. One in each bathroom and two hanging on the hallway walls, plus two in the cafeteria and two in the kitchen. Maybe, if she could shoot one from the shelter of a stairwell, the fire extinguisher would explode, and if not explode, at least the bullet would probably puncture the extinguisher. Either way, it would make a hell of a noise that would lure Becky out of the home economics kitchen, into the hall where she could be shot, and either way, Becky would step out into a cloud of extinguishing chemicals that would disorient her, maybe blind her long enough for Augusta to empty her gun.

Good idea? Bad idea? She didn't know, but it was all she could think of. She picked up the fire extinguisher from the floor, walked to the doorway and looked out, then stepped into the hallway, heading for the north stairwell. From the stairs at the north side of the building, one of the hallway fire extinguishers was closer and easier to shoot – she wanted to keep the one she had taken from the bathroom for use as either a smokescreen or an emergency bludgeon. If Becky surprised her, she would be ready.

That, and from the north, the home economics kitchen was slightly more than halfway down the hall, which would mean a longer time in the hall for Becky, and more time to shoot for Augusta.

The first classroom she passed, according to a tiny plaque on the wall beside the doorway, was that of Mrs. Ellroy, whose lecture on _The Wasteland_ had been interrupted ten years ago. The door was open and heat flowed out into the hall, carrying an odd wet odor. Augusta stopped and checked behind her, then stepped forward to peer through the doorway.

She dropped the fire extinguisher and shrank away as her mouth dropped open and her skin began to crawl with revulsion.

The room was crowded with a tangle of fleshy tendrils like vines, thousands, wrapped tightly around everything they touched, spilling fatly across desktops, crawling up the walls across posters and windows and bookshelves and across the blackboard, squeezing around chair legs and desk legs. They entwined in a grotesque web that glistened pink beneath the florescent lights from pus that ran and dripped, and had dried in a sludgy crust on every surface. Beneath a vent in the ceiling, a sagging clutch of tendrils quivered from the force of hot air billowing out.

In the center of the room, suspended and held fast by the web, was whom Augusta presumed to be Mrs. Ellroy, her arms and legs stretched out and coiled in runners of flesh that looked like pink mucus. The right half of her face seemed normal, though the left side had been overtaken by lumpy white scar tissue, like cancerous growths. Her right eye stared forward.

And blinked. Augusta sucked in a breath and tried not to scream.

As she watched, the trapped Mrs. Ellroy suddenly bounced up and down twice, then hovered, quivering and ensnared in the web. Three seconds later, it happened again.

Like a heartbeat. Augusta stepped back, feeling ill.

Her heart pounding, she stumbled through her options, backing away until she collided with a bank of lockers, choked down a shriek, recoiled, turned, then spun back to face Mrs. Ellroy's classroom. She hadn't been able to help the dead students in Berkowitz's Department Store, but she wondered if she could help this person. At least take her away from that horror that must surely have the power to pulverize a mind. At least take her away from it until Becky Taylor could be stopped.

She crept forward, until she could reach the fire extinguisher on the floor, terrified she would get too close and something inside would wriggle out to grab her and pull her in. She yanked up the fire extinguisher and threw herself away from the doorway, landing hard on the floor.

Dry chemical fire extinguisher. Ammonium phosphate and ammonium sulfate plus a few other complicated ingredients that all sounded poisonous. She wondered if she could spray it on the ropy worms of flesh and kill them, looked back at the label and saw a caution to clean up all surfaces touched by the chemicals "to prevent corrosion."

Promising. Pulling the fire extinguisher pin, she stood, aimed the short rubber hose at the open door, squeezed the handles and watched a jet of white powder explode outward, puffing up in clouds that slowly settled and sank.

Augusta gritted her teeth and snarled. Wherever the powder touched the tendrils of wet flesh, after it had lain a few seconds, the flesh turned an angry red and began to ooze huge beads of pus.

She sprayed until the fire extinguisher was empty and hissing its last gasps of compressed air. The flesh did not shrink away; it only festered and quivered. Then, it shifted. There was a wretched sucking sound as tendrils pulled away from surfaces, then the sound of wet things slithering. For a moment, Augusta was certain they would surge out through the doorway, wrap around her and pull her in to keep company with Mrs. Ellroy until her sanity shrank to a pinpoint, then died away altogether.

Instead, the tendrils drew away from the door, writhed in a mass to the left, then to the right, and the door was heaved forward with a savage shove that scooped up wide curls of dried pus from the floor. The door slammed shut, and behind its square window, fat snakes of wet flesh smacked themselves against the glass.

Augusta sank to her knees on the hall floor, trembling in frustration, disgust, and fury. Ten years. That woman in the classroom had almost certainly been strung up in that hideous, oozing web for ten years. She'd had a husband, and possibly children. She'd been somebody's wife, maybe somebody's mother; she'd had friends and relatives, and had come to work on the last day of her life to do what she always did – to teach, to inform. To present the beauty and complexity of the language of Shakespeare and Maya Angelou and Harper Lee.

She'd come to work, and had been murdered by the monster on the third floor, and ever since had been trapped in her own private hell by another monster, one that lived in the dark places of this town.

Becky Taylor had to die, again, and if Augusta survived this, she was going to pray every night for Weeping Mary to be wrenched out of this world and sent back to Hell.

This was so _wrong. _Augusta stood, gripping the fire extinguisher. Even empty, it was still heavy and solid, and would make a fine club. She checked behind her and saw the empty hall, then walked onward, toward the north.

A few classrooms along the hall from that of Mrs. Ellroy, was a room whose plaque read _Mrs. Harris_. The door was closed, but its window was slimed with pus and ropes of flesh slithered across the glass. From the fatter tendrils branched smaller and smaller worms until they spread out, fine and dispersed like the hair of a drowning victim. Another victim in another private hell. Augusta wondered who it might be.

There was so much blood on the floor. So many people had been injured. Eleven had died. If every victim in the school was trapped in a web of slimy flesh, that meant there were nine private hells in the building. The two dead students across the street at Berkowitz's were lucky, in that they only had to lay on the floor in endless agony, the boy with his brain popping out of a hole in his skull, the girl forever choking on her own blood.

Beyond the first floor classrooms were the school offices. Outside of one a wide trail of blood was smeared on the floor, leading away from scattered chunks of flesh and bone and what might be brains, past the offices to a pair of wide double doors. They were opened on the cafeteria and kitchen beyond, but as Augusta walked closer, she saw that not much farther past the doorway, the large open space of the cafeteria was filled with a stinking, runny jungle of fleshy tendrils. They pulsed in time to the silent heartbeat. They coiled tightly around chair legs and table legs, sprawled across tabletops and smothered every wall, every window and door, spilled down the fronts of a pair of soda machines. They snaked through trays full of food that still steamed, and to the far right, they filled the kitchen. Augusta could barely make them out through thousands of crisscrossing runners of oozing pink flesh, but there seemed to be a few large shapes caught in the web. Three victims. Maybe four. She turned away.

Her nerves, in their disgust, fired contradictory messages to one another and flashes of dizziness fluttered drunkenly in her skull as she passed the offices, then the classrooms, including those of Mrs. Harris and Mrs. Ellroy, on her way to the south stairwell. Before climbing up, she pulled the Ruger from its holster, checked the stairs and found them empty, and started up.

From the stairs she stepped out into the second floor hallway, and ran down the hall toward the north staircase, leaping over abandoned backpacks and books, leaving papers fluttering in her wake. Some classroom doors were open, others closed, and behind one open doorway and one closed door, the ropy flesh pulsed and throbbed and smeared itself foully with pus.

Seven or eight victims, plus two at Berkowitz's Department Store. That left at least one more still in the school.

At the north stairwell, tendrils filled the stairs between the first and second floors, but those leading up to the third floor were clear. Augusta climbed up, and discovered another victim in the third floor hall.

She sucked in her breath. In the distance, the end of the hall looked as though it had been walled off with a pink screen. She couldn't see the shape of the person trapped inside, but knew it was there, and guessed the grotesque web filled the last third of the hallway, probably all the way to the south staircase.

God in Heaven. She wondered how many shots it would take, then considered for the first time if the thing that Becky Taylor had undoubtedly become could even be killed. She couldn't kill Walter Sullivan – a red devil had to kill him for her. She didn't know if she had killed Joshua Blackwell, remembering the seal – the Seal of Metatron – that had scorched itself into the porcelain oven door. She couldn't kill the Joseph-thing.

But she had no other choice, and couldn't think of any other way to do what had to be done. Stepping to her right, she braced herself against the stairwell wall, sighted on the fire extinguisher marked on the school map, and fired.


	31. The explosive reaction

The bullet struck the fire extinguisher with an incredible bang in a burst of sparks, and a thin jet of chemicals sprayed out with enough force to rock the fire extinguisher on its hook on the wall. It clanged against the wall and clattered on its hook. The jet of white chemicals arced through the air in a graceful fan that waved back and forth.

Augusta dropped to her stomach on the stairs, pointing the gun ahead and waiting for Becky to emerge.

"Come on, you bitch," she muttered, and cast a glance ahead, across a wide landing to the bathrooms and the elevator doors, shut tight.

Nothing happened. Lockers along the walls blocked her view of doors farther down the hall, and she couldn't see if the door to the home economics kitchen stood open. She couldn't tell which door the kitchen lay behind either, she realized, and frowned.

Hissing and rattling, the fire extinguisher banged against the wall. If Becky was here, she must surely be able to hear it.

Nothing happened. Augusta waited.

Finally, she cursed and crawled up the stairs to the third floor, then crouched and began to creep along the hallway's right wall, her gun in one hand and the empty fire extinguisher in the other. The fire extinguisher on the wall frothed and wrenched itself back and forth. Augusta gritted her teeth and crept onward. When banks of lockers along the wall broke for a classroom door, she ducked into the shelter of the gap and waited, straining to hear over the fire extinguisher.

After a moment, she emerged and crept along the wall to the next gap between banks of lockers. This classroom door was open, and she slipped inside and quietly closed the door behind her. Away from the door's large square window, she stood and flattened herself against the classroom wall, and tried to slow her pounding heart. Deep in her mind she asked herself if everything she was doing was brave and admirable, or just stupid. She thought back to the approach to Walter Sullivan's apartment door in the basement of Sutcliffe Place.

This might not end well. Becky Taylor, or whatever she had become in the space of ten years, could probably kill her effortlessly. But, this had to be done. People were suffering here and someone had to do something to help them. She wished it wasn't up to her, said a prayer for safety, then took a deep breath and checked the hall to find it empty and stepped out.

The next two classroom doors were closed and locked. The third was open and she hurried inside and away from the door with its window, trying to slow her breathing and her heart. She had begun to sweat in her nervousness. She set down her empty fire extinguisher to free a hand to smooth her hair, which was frizzy and tangled.

Back in the hall, one last classroom lay between her and the home economics kitchen. She stepped out and tried to sneak along the wall. A familiar odor, that of wet flesh and pus, began to grow stronger as she passed the final classroom, whose door was shut tight.

The door to the home economics kitchen was closed, its window opaque with slime and fat ropes of flesh. Augusta stared at it, panting. Not much farther down the hall to the south, more flesh stretched in a net from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. The odor was like that of an infection, a watery stink tinged with rot.

However, she realized for the first time she could also smell something sweet. Baked goods. Cookies. Her breath sighed out. Becky Taylor was eating cookies in the home economics kitchen just as she had ten years ago.

What now? It couldn't be a good idea to try to open the door. If she could break the window, she could shoot inside, but she had no idea where in the room Becky might be, and didn't want to waste her bullets or the time it would take to reload the Ruger's clip. Plus, breaking the window would let the things inside, including Becky Taylor, come out. That, and if she shot out the window, Becky would probably answer in kind. Augusta backed away from the door, trying to walk silently toward the safety of an unlocked room down the hall.

Once inside, with the door closed on the hall, she studied the room around her. It was plain, probably used for a business class, or something equally dreary. There were bookshelves along the walls, and rows of long tables with several chairs lined up beneath each one facing a whiteboard at the front of the room. At the rear was a large, cluttered desk. The only decorations were a few posters that depicted city skylines, framed behind glass. Augusta dragged a chair away from a table, to her left toward the wall farthest away from the door, well out of sight of anything that might look in. She sat and tried to think of what to do.

She was afraid to break the window, and wouldn't try to open the door. If she tried either, Becky would either fill the air with bullets, or would emerge from the kitchen, dripping and stinking, and would reach for her with a thousand flailing tentacles.

Maybe if she had a bomb of some sort... She could throw the fire extinguisher at the glass, hurl the bomb inside and run. If it didn't kill Becky, it would at least hurt her. Or, maybe if she had a live wire. Again, she could break the glass and toss the wire inside before Becky could shoot. The agony of electricity coursing through her flesh might immobilize her while Augusta emptied her gun into whatever she had become.

Or, better still, it might keep her still while Augusta shot her _and_ threw in some sort of bomb. She smiled. A bomb _and_ a live wire.

The chemistry labs, along with every other science classroom, were located on the second floor. Augusta stood, went to the door and checked the hall, then hurried toward the staircase. This would be easy.

Silent Hill High School was large enough to need two chemistry labs and two biology labs each, all aligned in a row along the west wall halfway between the two stairwells. Augusta found the doors of one biology lab and both chemistry labs standing open, though one chemistry lab was too crowded with heavy hanging ropes of flesh to enter. Trapped inside was a shape, wrapped tight like a caterpillar in a cocoon.

The second chemistry lab was directly beneath the home economics kitchen, Augusta learned. Its tile ceiling sagged from the weight of something gigantic in the room above, and dripping pus had dried on itself until it formed gruesome sculptures like stalactites hanging from black, empty squares where tiles had fallen away.

"Oh, God..." Augusta gagged.

Some of the stalactites were moving. They were tendrils of flesh hanging low, forced between cracks in the floor above and dangling low like roots pushed through into a tomb. Unconnected from each other, they writhed slowly in the air, curling and uncurling and seeming to search in lazy circles. The room was horribly humid and warm.

It seemed that every muscle in her body clenched in revulsion, and Augusta had to turn away. Would there be any other place in the school where she would find what she wanted? She desperately wanted to stay out of the chemistry lab, but wanted ammonia and bleach, which, when combined, would release poisonous chloramine gas. She needed glass bottles or jars, because she couldn't trust that a plastic bottle would burst, especially if it landed on a _soft_ coil of flesh.

Maybe this needed more thought. She had wanted to find ammonia and bleach, and glass containers to hold them, so she could throw them and trust they would shatter and mix their contents. She had wanted hydrochloric acid, and maybe sulfuric acid, to pour on the floor just outside the kitchen door, in case Becky tried to emerge – or to throw at her.

She could do without hydrochloric acid, because ammonia, bleach, and sulfuric acid could probably be found in a janitor's closet somewhere – but, if the janitor's closets had doors like those of every classroom, they would lock when closed, and thus could only be opened from the inside or with a key.

Shit. She set down the empty fire extinguisher, and carefully stepped inside.

Pus had scabbed on the floor and was like boggy mud beneath her feet. The stink was unbearable, and this must be what it was like to be inside a wound, Augusta thought.

The chemistry labs were slightly smaller than other classrooms because part of their space was occupied by a room for chemical storage, located to the left behind a small door standing open. Augusta headed for the doorway, taking small, careful steps on the slippery floor, and watching the hanging, dripping tendrils and long dried whips of pus.

The left side of the room was relatively clean, and Augusta stood still for a moment when she reached the storage room doorway, trying to calm her stomach, which quivered as though it would revolt at any moment. A long counter with sinks stood to her left, and beyond sat the teacher's desk. A narrow aisle ran between the counter and desk and wall, where a giant whiteboard was filled with writing. Though occasional dribbles of pus had run down its surface and smeared the letters written with marker there, there was more than enough left to tell that the chemistry lesson for Thursday, February 19, 1994 had been about chemical reactions.

Written in green dry-erase marker:

_Household chemicals can sometimes yield violent reactions when mixed. Mixing two common cleaning chemicals, ammonia and chlorine bleach, will result in the release of poisonous and corrosive chloramine gas._

And below, written in a familiar shade of blue:

_However, often your truly exotic chemical reactions result from the combination of a common chemical with one that is unusual. Combining common hydrocarbons (gasoline, for example) with aluminium chloride will result in the formation of styrene and polystyrene. Combining water and aluminium chloride meanwhile, yields a violent, explosive reaction on contact, as well as hydrochloric acid as a byproduct._

Sounds fun, thought Augusta sourly. But, if she could keep her disgust at bay, this might work out well after all. Aluminium chloride. That and anything else that looked dangerous in the storage room. She stepped inside and smiled at the sight of a blue plastic crate on the counter. Just the thing for transporting bottles of chemicals.

The room was filled with a collection of old wooden glass-fronted cabinets where non-dangerous chemicals were stored, and airtight metal lockers and fume lockers where volatile substances were kept apart from others. Augusta realized she had no idea what aluminium chloride would look like, but searching the wooden cabinets, she found it quickly. The cabinet was locked, so she smashed the glass door with a large textbook she found on the counter behind her, then reached in and retrieved a tall glass jar almost full of greyish-white powder. She put the jar in the plastic crate, then turned back toward the cabinets.

Two glass bottles of concentrated hydrochloric acid, as clear and harmless-looking as water, went into the crate, along with a thick plastic bottle of sulfuric acid solution. A sink with a dripping faucet was set into the counter, and above it was a cupboard full of empty jars and plastic bottles. Augusta grabbed a large glass bottle with a cap, and filled it from the sink, making sure to close it tightly and to wipe away any moisture from the outside with a paper towel from a nearby dispenser bolted to the wall.

Next, she searched the drawers beneath the counter hoping to find, then finding, a roll of duct tape and a good, sharp pair of scissors to cut it. She taped the bottle of water to the jar of aluminium chloride, and wrapped them several times in rings of tape until they were belted tightly together.

She wondered if she should look for an electrical cord, and decided, why not? There were cabinets beneath the counter drawers and in one she found a very long, bright orange coiled extension cord. She grabbed it, unrolled it, and hacked at it with the scissors until her hand was sore and one end of the cord dropped away like a severed snake's head. With a scissor blade, she cut away the insulation at the severed end until two long, ugly strands of copper wire were exposed.

Plug it in, and instant cattle prod. She smiled again. Becky Taylor just might get what was coming to her.

Back through the dripping, infected chemistry lab, with her gun, and bottles and jars and cord in the crate, bending to pick up her empty fire extinguisher, then down the hall and up the stairs to the third floor, where the fire extinguisher on the wall still puffed its chemicals into the air, though with hardly any force left in it. Rocking back and forth on its hook, it clucked metallically to itself. Augusta crept down the hall, taking care not to let the jars and bottles knock together, silent just in case.

At the home economics kitchen, Augusta knelt and set the crate on the floor a safe distance away. She took the cord first and, uncoiling it, led it in a trail from an outlet in the nearest unlocked classroom to the door, where she set it carefully on the floor. She planned to break the window and heave in her makeshift bomb, then run and plug in the cord. She could then toss that inside, or snatch it up by a length still sheathed in orange insulated plastic, then thrust it at anything that might emerge.

She took her gun and after checking to be sure its safety was on, secured it in her holster. Then, she picked up the bottles wrapped in tape from her crate and grabbed her empty fire extinguisher, and carried them to the kitchen door.

She took a deep breath, then fumbled with the fire extinguisher until she held its rubber hose tightly in her hand. Stepping back, she swung the extinguisher by its hose as hard as she could. The glass shattered and fell in, wide plates of it glued to flesh, which peeled away from the window frame like stubborn vines. As the glass crashed in on itself, Augusta dropped and rolled away from the door, hurling the wrapped bottles inside. As she hit the floor, she heard the satisfying sound of the bottles shattering.

And as she tried to climb to her feet, aluminium chloride mixed with water and exploded. Augusta felt as though she were falling and after a moment the feeling reversed itself as the floor bucked to throw her into the air. Behind her, the door to the home economics kitchen was ripped in half and burst from its frame. The lower half danced a jerky dance across the hallway, where it slammed into the closed door of another classroom, bounced off and fell, and hit the floor with a bang. The upper half flew from its hinges and, spinning, embedded itself in the ceiling. A shockwave hammered the walls and floor; tiles popped from the hallway floor, and banks of lockers, each a single unit, swung out from the walls. A jets of debris spewed out from the kitchen, shooting chunks of concrete, wood, and tile, and twisted shards of metal with enough force to drive them into the walls.

The ringing in her ears was as loud a scream, and she barely heard the roar from the kitchen as half its floor and most of the outside wall blew away. She couldn't hear Becky Taylor scream. When the floor stilled, she lay face down, groaning. Above her, the lights flickered, failed, blinked on again. Her nose had begun to bleed as the ringing in her ears slowly gave way to a roar. She realized in some part of her mind that the longer she lay on the floor the more time Becky Taylor would have, if she had survived, to come after her, but she couldn't force herself to stand.

Her hands and knees was the best she could do, and she watched blood dripping from her nose to land in dime-sized blots on the floor, and tried not to vomit. Her head swam. The roaring in her ears gave way to ringing again. She felt as though she'd been beaten.

It seemed to take hours before she could stand again, and when she forced herself to her feet, she had to lean against the nearest bank of lockers. Everything hurt. On the floor, the orange extension cord had recoiled as if in horror and flung itself down the hall, and the concussion must have thrown the crate far down the hall. Both bottles of hydrochloric acid lay in shards, their contents puddled on the floor, while the sulfuric acid in its sturdy bottle was a tiny dark shape far away, but at least it hadn't also burst.

She needed to check to see how Becky had fared, and realized she should draw her gun, but couldn't, and had to sit down cross-legged, eyes closed. The ringing quieted slightly, though she could feel her pulse pounding in her skull.

Deep breaths. Deep breaths, trying to ignore plaster dust that coated the back of her throat, until the fog in her skull lifted enough to let her stand again and trust herself to draw her gun without dropping it. She staggered across the hall to look into the home economics kitchen.

She nearly fell down again.

Most of the floor had dropped into the chemistry lab below, and almost half of the left rear wall was missing. Above, the ceiling sagged. Appliances, tables, and chairs had crashed to the floor below, or had been flung across the room and sunk into a great mass of flesh that had itself apparently been torn away from its wet, blubbery roots and splattered against the wall. Thousands of tendrils of wet flesh, now coated in dust and chunks of debris, protruded from the walls.

Apparently they had been connected to the fleshy mass and, ripped away from it, they hung down dead. The mass, missing huge chunks, and with its entrails burst and splattered and gluing it in place, had once been Becky Taylor.

Her torso, though ripped open in places and studded with pieces of debris, hung from the mass. Augusta could see her face, a ruin of a teenage girl's. Her mouth was open. Her arms hung down and tangled in her hair. She had been fat. Small but fleshy breasts and a paunchy belly gave way to that colossal mound, now burst in so many places and spilling innards.

As Augusta watched, the mass pulsed and the recognizable parts of Becky Taylor, so much like a figurehead on the prow of a schooner, flailed back and forth as though something were trying to force its way out.

Something was. Bullets. Brass-jacketed bullets. Becky Taylor began to vomit bullets, a shiny cascade of brass spilling in a torrent down into what had once been the chemistry lab below. The sound was like that of coins being poured from a jar. There must have been thousands.

Augusta closed her eyes for a moment, breathing heavily and feeling blood trickle across her lips. The sound of bullets pouring never stopped and when she opened her eyes again, the flow from Becky's mouth rained down as strongly as ever.

The mass was pulling away from the wall, slowly. Splatters of Becky's entrails stretched, then pulled away from the walls and floor. What tentacles hadn't been ripped away were still firmly rooted, but stretched and tore, snapped wetly, and the whole mass that had been Becky Taylor fell, still spewing brass in a fountain. It hit the floor and debris below and burst open in a dozen new places.

Augusta thumbed the Ruger's safety, and emptied her gun into Becky Taylor. The hallway lights, still flickering, finally died and stayed dead.

The world seemed to turn grey. Augusta reeled and put a hand to her forehead, groaning. Streaks of rust appeared on the lockers as tiles dropped from the ceiling, followed by sagging loops of wire. Papers, books, and backpacks cluttering the hallway vanished and splotches of blood became furry patches of moss. A slime of algae spread across the floor. Ahead, even more of the home economics kitchen fell away, crumbling with a sound like tumbling rocks. Snowflakes swirled in with a rush of mist.

In the dampness, wood swelled and warped, and five years of grit crusted on the floor.

Dizziness. Nausea. Her head hurt.


	32. Anyone like you

As she holstered her gun and checked her flashlight, which seemed unbroken, she thought she probably had a concussion. Almost certainly, actually, what with the ringing in her ears and her bloody nose. She leaned against the nearest wall that didn't look as though it would be next to fall, and tried to take deep breaths of cold, wet air. It helped the dizziness and nausea, though when she moved her head or neck, it hurt.

But, it could have been worse, and she thought that was one of the nice things about life. Most things could usually have been worse. When the kitchen door split in half and blew out it could have easily chopped her in half. She could have lost an arm or leg. Her concussion, if she had one, could have been much worse.

But none of it had been, and she thought, I'll survive. I'll survive, I'll get rid of Joseph, and then once she's finally safe from him, Kitty and I will go home. I'll finally get to leave this place.

She put a hand to her forehead, wanting to ask again questions whose answers she already knew. It seemed to help keep her sanity intact. Why was this happening? Why to her? Why did she have to see all this? Why was it up to her to help so many suffering people – was there no one else at all? She just wanted to find Joseph and give him what he deserved for trying to hurt her daughter. Give him what he deserved for talking her into killing that child in the first place and what he deserved for luring her here to try to torture her with her own guilt. And then, when Joseph could no longer hurt her or threaten her or menace that beautiful little girl, she just wanted to go home. She never wanted to set foot in the state of Illinois ever again.

She sighed. Why? Why any of it?

The answer was the same as before: because. When your child is threatened, you must fight to eliminate the threat. When your child is hurt, you must take away the pain, then take away the threat. When people around you are suffering, you must work to ease their suffering. Why? Because you must.

She so wanted to go home and rest.

Regardless, she thought, if she wanted to leave, she needed to move, and looked down to see the orange extension cord still laying like a dead snake on the floor. Self-pity took too much time, and so it was time to go, which meant it was time to be practical again. She thought the cord might still be a good thing to have. She bent, and nearly fell when hot nails of pain shot through her skull, closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath, then opened her eyes and reached for the cord. Winding it, when she had finished she picked it up, looked at the fat coil, and wondered how she would carry it and her shovel both, then turned and walked toward the south stairwell. Her skull vibrated with pain in time to her footsteps.

When she had almost reached the stairs, she felt a breath of heat from the dark and empty stairwell ahead. Something seemed to be moving across the floor and walls. She blinked. Blurred vision, another symptom of a concussion, seemed to have passed her by, so what was this?

Dark threads that looked as thick as liquid streamed across the floor. One joined another and another, growing into trickles, then streams, then rivers of moving shadow. She heard a sound like thick cloth being pulled across the floor, but the flowing threads had no substance. They passed under her shoes, not parting, then spilled away behind her.

She drew her gun as she carefully turned and looked back down the hall, then remembered she had unloaded all her bullets into the monster that had been Becky Taylor. But there might be time to reload. She dropped the cord, squirmed until her left arm was free of its backpack strap, then swung her backpack around and unzipped it, and reached for the nearest box of bullets.

In dim gloom she could barely make it out, but there was a definite patch of shadow much darker than all the others in the ruined hallway. It seemed to be growing, absorbing every flowing shadow, and hovered, a giant black mass outside the open doorway of the home economics kitchen several yards away.

Augusta looked down and saw the last trailing threads pass beneath her feet and draw away like the edge of a ragged shawl down toward the mass. She scooped out a handful of bullets, then ejected the Ruger's clip, refilled it, and popped it back in, then zipped up her backpack and slung it behind her and out of the way.

A sound, almost a crackling, like a thick muddy liquid being poured out. She looked up and saw the mass forming a shape, the distant silhouette of something she thought she ought to recognize. A mound, with another shape protruding from the top. Augusta didn't dare switch on her flashlight for a better view – then realized that even if her flashlight looked unharmed, she didn't even know if it would still work anyway.

The shape took on color and form, visible even in the darkness, washed out in what faint light spilling in with the snowflakes through the hole in the kitchen roof and walls.

Weeping Mary, her hair falling down in a wave, wore her parrot top over a long and bulky skirt of raggedly sewn-together leather patches.

There was just enough light to see... not leather. Not leather. Some of the patches had tattoos, others shriveled nipples, others human faces with their eyes and mouths sewn shut.

Augusta stared straight ahead, breathing hard through her mouth, trying not to scream. She could never run away, she realized. The pain in her skull would buckle her knees, so she tried to back away quietly as she aimed her gun straight ahead. If she could reach the stairs...

There was more light suddenly. Weeping Mary did not wear her sunglasses, and from her empty eye sockets blood pumped in furious spurts. That, and tongues of flame licked up and over her forehead, never singeing or burning her hair.

The air began to hum with energy that spilled across Augusta's skin in crackles like static electricity.

"I know you're here," Weeping Mary seemed to speak with a dozen voices that all scraped against one another. "I know you're here, but I can't see where. That's good for you, my dear, because if I knew where you were I'd tear you to pieces right here and now, suffering or no."

She looked down the hall, away from Augusta, as if searching.

"You just cause trouble wherever you go, don't you? You and your little friend."

Weeping Mary turned her gaze to Augusta, who jumped and gasped. She can't see me, she can't see me, she can't see me... Her hand tightened on the handle of her gun. She can't see me... shouldn't let her know where I am. Augusta thumbed the safety and jammed her gun back into its holster. Can't shoot. Shouldn't shoot.

"Well, that is about to change... _Do you hear me!_ We'll have no more of you running hither and yon getting into trouble. It is _past_ time for you to start giving back what you've taken."

The bleeding, burning, empty eyes whipped away again.

"You've not even _begun_ to suffer yet, but I know of just the place for you to go. It's special. There's no hope there for anyone like _you._"

What did that mean? Augusta's heart pounded.

The floor vibrated beneath her feet and from far away she heard the shriek of tearing steel. It sounded almost dreamy. Down the hall, everything around Weeping Mary began to change. The walls, the floor, the ceiling... it seemed as though something was burning through to the surface... rusted metal grating... ruin... Anger pulsed in waves from the spot where Weeping Mary stood snarling and clenching her fists. Fury. Hatred... It fluttered across the surface of Augusta's skin like the wings of a dying bird, gently but horribly.

"I _will_ get my meal out of you yet, woman," she growled, "Make no mistake about that. If it weren't for your scarred god's whore, you'd have been dead hours ago. Others like you have come here and I've had my fun with them and then left their carcasses for the rats and the roaches. Others like you have come before and caused their trouble and gotten away. I don't much care for that."

Her hands exploded into the heavy, jeweled claws that she stabbed forward into the nearest banks of lockers. When she wrenched them away, she held giant fistfuls of torn metal, then threw them away with a shriek that seemed to scrape through marrow.

"Bitch, I _will get you_, do you hear me? _I will get you._ It's time to suffer, darling, and you've got somewhere very special to go now. Go and suffer."

Weeping Mary vanished with a quiet pop, and Augusta was left alone to stare at the spot where she had stood, heart hammering. The third floor hallway of Silent Hill High School rotted quietly in the damp.

Augusta sagged, nearly fell, but caught herself. She didn't want to know what place Weeping Mary wanted her to go. And, what the hell would it have to do with _anyone like you._ That sounded... she didn't want to know what it sounded like. It would be something horrible, and there was no shortage of horrible things in Silent Hill.

Why? Because.

She knelt carefully to pick up the cord, then turned, walked to the south stairwell, and began to descend.

On the first floor, the chains that had bound the door were gone, as she expected. She couldn't stand to look back, pushed open the door, and was greeted by the sight of a corridor, walled and roofed with chain link, leading down the steps and away into the mist. It was like... an animal pen, she thought, and looked to her right, where she remembered leaving her shovel. It waited for her, leaning against the chain link, inside the cage. She grabbed the handle and felt cold steel in her fist, and hefted it over her shoulder. Having it with her again made her feel a little better.

She stopped to stare at the cage around her, into the mist and gently falling snow, thinking. She'd had no intention of going anywhere Weeping Mary wanted her to go, but apparently now she no longer had a choice. No more running hither and yon. The cage ran ahead until it disappeared in the fog.

Where did it go? A caged path. Joseph said he would be waiting for her in the house they had once shared in the Windowbox District. Did it lead there? Probably not – Augusta supposed it would take her to some place where something truly awful had happened in the past, something that had to do with _anyone like you_. Which meant...

People like her. Women? Black women? Black people? A place where something horrifying had happened to black people.

Oh, dear God. Where? What? She searched her memory, thought back to _An Unwanted County, _or anything else she might have ever read. Surely she would remember something like _that_, but hadn't thought about it in so long...

A lynching. They stood out like the murders of Billy and Miriam Locane had stood out, and for the same reason, because of her natural horror at what had occurred, and her natural pity for the victims. She hadn't thought about them in years because she didn't want to think about them. Them. Which lynching? There had been more than one in Silent Hill's history. One knee gave way and Augusta dropped into a kneel and pain crashed in her skull like a breaking wave. Her muscles clenched in a violent shiver.

_There's no hope there for anyone like you._ How true. Nobody wanted to think about a lynching, although Augusta knew they had occurred in forty-three states over the years. From 1882 to 1962, exactly one hundred had been committed in North Carolina, the state where she now lived – two in Asheville alone, the last in 1906. Thirty-seven in Illinois. Two hundred and eighty-four in her birth state of Arkansas. Men, women, children. Burned alive, hung from trees, thrown bound and gagged from bridges. Shot, tortured, dragged behind wagons and, later, cars.

March 19, 1906. Chattanooga, Tennessee. The victim was a black man named Edward Johnson, spuriously suspected of the rape of a white woman. He had addressed the gathered crowd before being hanged from the Walnut Street Bridge and shot hundreds of times.

"I am not guilty and that is all I have to say. God bless you all. I am innocent," were his last words. A note was pinned to his dead body as it lay on the ground beneath the bridge. Addressed to a local judge, it read: _To Justice Harlan. Come get your nigger now_.

In Mississippi in 1904, a black man named Luther Holbert was suspected of murdering a wealthy white landowner. He attempted to flee his home with his wife, but both where chased down by a mob. They were bound to a pair of trees, and their fingers and ears were chopped off. The victims were then tortured with a corkscrew produced by someone in the mob, and finally the Holberts were set afire while still alive. A photograph of the incident records a crowd of at least six hundred enjoying a picnic lunch while the bodies burned.

The ears and fingers were later sold as souvenirs.

In May of 1907, a black man named Sim Padgett was lynched in Reidsville, Georgia for "aiding a criminal." For good measure, his wife, son, daughter, and "another black person" were also killed.

The phenomenon of lynching, of course, were not limited solely to _anyone like you_. Hundreds of Mexican immigrants were lynched in the West, Japanese immigrants were hanged in Hawaii, and Japanese scientists studying the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 were stoned by an enraged mob. Chinatowns in Denver and in Santa Ana, California were burned to the ground.

Nevertheless in 1904, a man from the Congo was put on display at the Bronx Zoo in New York, and in 1923, the black town of Rosewood, Florida was set afire after its residents were chased out, or chased down, beaten, and killed.

Augusta's stomach lurched. To have been born, and been born black, in the South, was to know one's history and to live with it every day. It was to acknowledge that you and everyone around you in your Southern community had a thousand squalling little demons trailing along in their shadows. People in other parts of the United States had the luxury of forgetting that fact, even though their history was every bit as bloody.

Illinois did not share the stigma of violence that painted Mississippi or Arkansas, despite its race riots – in Springfield in 1908, East St. Louis in 1917, and in Chicago in 1919 and there again in the 1960's. When one thought of a lynching, one thought of the South, not Illinois, despite thirty-seven having happened there.

Yes indeed, thought Augusta. Thirty-seven, including three in Silent Hill. Now that she thought about it, that wasn't at all surprising. So, which one of the three was she preparing to relive?

"I can't do this," she said, "Anything but this."

Murdered children, mutilations, creatures that didn't exist, including one that looked like Joseph and another that had dragged away the man who had lain on the sofa. School shootings. People suffering and dying in every way imaginable, trapped in their sufferings to feed a demon. But, she couldn't face a lynching.

She dropped the cord and set her shovel on the ground, and put her head in her hands.

Someone needed her help. The lynching victim, whoever it might be. That person, whichever one of the three people who had been lynched in Silent Hill, needed her.

I can't. I can't do this. I can't face it. I can't.

Not long ago, the YMI Cultural Center, Asheville's African-American history and culture museum, had hosted a traveling exhibit called _Worlds Apart: Photographs of Segregation_. She'd gone to see it, not because she especially wanted to, but because she felt she should. Personally, she had never experienced any overt racism, and had certainly never experienced any violence and so to witness that committed against others seemed the least she could do.

She had seen the picture of the Mississippi picnic, hundreds of people eating deviled eggs and sipping lemonade while pointing and laughing at burning bodies lashed to nearby trees. She'd seen other pictures too. Bodies hanged from telephone poles, a minister – a white minister – from Michigan who had been branded after giving a sermon denouncing the Ku Klux Klan, a black family – husband, wife, and two little boys – hanging from a bridge. And plenty more.

She'd had a panic attack and when she tried to flee the museum, one of the volunteer counselors on hand for the exhibit had to restrain her and calm her.

And those were just pictures, she thought. I can't _do_ this.

So now what? Sit here, caged in chain link and thirst and starve to death? Go back through the school and try the north entrance? She turned, carefully, to see the doorway behind her vanished behind a cement wall. That had happened once before, in the Ridgeview Medical Clinic building. Weeping Mary seemed to excel in trapping and caging her victims.

And why not? Augusta sighed. Hell, for most of Weeping Mary's existence as a "god" she had sustained herself through the suffering of a _captive_ of pain.

"That's much better, darling," said a voice from above, and Augusta looked up to see Weeping Mary leering at her, and screamed. She threw herself forward, tripped, and fell against the chain link, and her vision blurred as she slid to the sidewalk of Ferris Street. Pain in her head pounded an alarm.

"I still can't see you, but I know you're here, and I know you're afraid." Blood poured from her eye sockets, splashing onto the pavement. "I know what makes you afraid."

She licked her fingers, which oozed with familiar red sludge, and smiled meanly. "You're in pain, too, I see, and that's good. I'll feed off that as well."

She chuckled grotesquely, jumped into a squat, then leapt away into mist and disappeared.

Augusta grabbed her shovel and the wound cord and painfully jogged away. She wanted to be somewhere else. When Weeping Mary made an appearance, Augusta wanted to go away, wanted to be anywhere but any place that Weeping Mary had tainted with her presence. It seemed that Weeping Mary left a corruption wherever she went. Even in a dead, evil town, it seemed that wherever she stood, the ground oozed pus and whatever she touched grew scabs.

Augusta wanted to be away.


	33. The white bathroom

The chainlink cage crossed to the far side of Ferris Street, where it turned right to lead northward just short of the sidewalk. By the time she followed the path to the intersection of Ferris Street and Hilley Street, she had managed to curdle her fear into a simple resigned dread. This was a death march and she knew it, because at the end of the path the worst of all waited. Weeping Mary would settle for nothing less, and Augusta didn't have a choice. The path would lead where it would lead. If she gave it too much thought she would panic, and if she panicked, she would go insane.

Would that be any better? She trudged on, trying not to think about anything, concentrating instead on her aching head and on putting one foot in front of the other.

Did she want to search her memory for details of the Silent Hill lynchings? No. I don't want to think about anything. Nothing at all. One foot. Head hurts. The other foot. Head hurts. And so she followed the trail, inside walls and beneath a ceiling of chainlink. She walked the block between Hilley Street and Schaefer Avenue in silence. Mist rolled in one direction and then another.

Between Schaefer Avenue and Panzram Avenue, a sinkhole swooped in from the east side of Ferris Street, where it must have swallowed the houses filling the block there. The mist was too thick to tell but there was the feeling of empty space. The caged path continued across unimpeded, like a bridge, and Augusta refused to allow herself to be surprised. Surprise would invite thought and thought would invite panic. March the death march. One foot. Head hurts. The other foot. Head hurts.

Past the pit, between Panzram Avenue and Glatman Avenue, cars lay on their sides in the street, as if the cage had sprung up from the pavement and tossed them aside. No surprise. No thought.

One foot. The other foot.

Head hurts.

Was it still snowing? It seemed that only the rare snowflake now fell to earth to melt on the pavement. And it seemed they only drifted down from her right, no longer directly from above.

The trees planted along the edge of Ferris Street had burst to life, each with thousands and thousands of summer-green leaves hanging limply, melting the snowflakes. Water droplets fell.

No thought. Refuse to notice.

Death march.

At Beufield Avenue the cage turned again, to the east, deeper into East Silent Hill, which should be surprising.

Why should it be surprising? Augusta refused to think about it.

The houses here were grand. Magnificent Victorian castles that had been painted all manner of bright colors five years ago. One house, painted gray, with hot pink shutters and trim, would sit next to another painted bright blue, with sunny yellow shutters and scarlet trim. Few residents of East Silent Hill settled for anything plain.

The paint on every house was peeling; the wood beneath warped and rotting and slowly turning silver. Bushes in yards had grown up to scratch at porch railings. Trees that were planted when the houses were new drooped branches into the street. Colors of flowers shouted to be heard against quieting mist. The cage ran down the center of Beufield Avenue, passing trees and the occasional abandoned car. Cook Street ran parallel to Ferris, and between the two a wide crevice not quite another pit wound its way from one side of Beufield Avenue to the other. The caged path bridged it and continued.

At Cook Street, the path turned left and continued northward. The intersection of Cook Street and Rogers Avenue came and went, but between Rogers Avenue and Massey Street, a sinkhole had apparently opened up beneath a large house on the right side of the street. Part of Cook Street had caved in as well, and what had been the house's third floor tilted precariously out over the spilling, broken pavement, with its shattered windows level with the ground. A round tower with a conical roof seemed aimed toward the sky as if ready to launch to the west, over the Illiniwak River to land in the heart of downtown. The house and its tower were painted purple with white trim.

Past Cook Street's intersection with Massey Street, one of the squares of East Silent Hill opened up on the left. Some of the squares hid fountains or statues at their heart. Others held playgrounds or flower gardens. It was impossible to tell what lay in the square here. All Augusta could see were trees so heavy with leaves that it might have been July, robbed of their colors and edges by fog.

On the right, two gigantic houses filled the block facing the park, peeking out between tall trees planted along the sidewalk. One was made of brick, while the other was painted a bland, snowy white. The path turned sharply to lead between the trees and antique lampposts in a row along the street, up the stairs and onto the broad veranda of the white house. Augusta stopped to stare, trying to ignore the dread that came to life and tried to writhe and thrash an alarm. Her head hurt.

If she didn't go forward now, she never would. She would flee and run back and forth in the cage until she dropped dead of exhaustion, and so she forced a foot forward and then another. The stairs came down to the sidewalk, and fat azalea bushes blazing with color had been planted long ago on either side, all along the front of the house. Someone standing on the porch would have to lean down to pluck a blossom. The house loomed. It imposed. It lorded over the street. It rose up three floors beneath an attic, with a round tower to the left that climbed up one story farther above that.

A tower room was the sort of thing you always found in Victorian houses in novels for children, where the characters lived lives that were vastly more interesting than yours, in houses that were grander than anything you would ever live in. As a child, reading such books, Augusta had always thought it seemed unfair.

She climbed the stairs. The chainlink cage crossed the porch to the doorway, where it molded itself precisely to an archway that sheltered a pair of wide double doors. A view through the small oval window in each door was blocked by curtains pulled tight. To the left and right there were shapes of furniture. Dark wicker rocking chairs and couches. On either side of the doorway, lush potted plants stood in polished brass pots. This house had not been left to the mercy of five years of mist. Whatever had happened here, and whenever it had happened, was waiting patiently for her to open the door and step into the midst of it all.

The doorknobs were bulbous and looked antique and heavy. More polished brass. So were the hinges. In her hand one doorknob was frigid, but it turned easily and the door swung inward. She stepped inside and the let the door swing shut behind her, as she knew it would. It wouldn't have done any good to leave it open, she thought, because where could she go? Why bother to even try to run?

She noticed the heat first, and then long slants of shade-mottled sunlight spilling in through every window, including those in the doors behind her. Outside, it was a misty May day. Inside the house it was a stifling summer afternoon. She stood in a broad entry hall, where a spindly brass chandelier with a dozen glass globes hung from the ceiling high above. The walls bulged in the corner to her left, in the shape of the tower she had seen from outside. A huge potted plant basked in sunlight there.

Ahead and to the left a staircase began its ascent, paused at a landing and doubled back on itself, then rose higher to the second floor. Beyond the staircase was an archway that revealed a parlor crowded with new antiques, and to her right a door stood open to show a dining room filled with dark wood chairs and table, cabinet, and sideboard. Furniture in the hall, as in the parlor and dining room, was huge and looming, dark and ornate. Patterned rugs that looked far too expensive to stand on sprawled on every floor.

On tables stood electric fans with grills more than large enough for a finger to slip inside to be butchered by blades that likely wouldn't stop spinning and would slice that finger to pieces. They, and the occasional lazily spinning, and bizarrely antiquated-looking, ceiling fan above did little but stir hot air.

She could see a fireplace in each room and knew there were more elsewhere. Large dingy oil paintings of landscapes decorated every wall. There were lamps with stained-glass shades, and porcelain figurines of dancing people on shelves and tabletops. Potted ferns basked by windows atop fussy brass plant stands. In the parlor ahead she noticed what first appeared to be a cabinet, but was instead a giant radio.

All in all, this was the typically lovely house of a well-off family. A doctor's perhaps, or a banker's or lawyer's, and Augusta guessed she was seeing this house as it had appeared some time in the 1920's. A newspaper lay open on the dining table to her right, but she didn't want to look at it. She didn't want to know.

She looked at the grand house around her, grimly, calmly. This was where Weeping Mary had wanted her to go, so what now? In the heat, sweat began to prickle her scalp.

It seemed wisest to try to avoid being seen. She looked forward toward the parlor, then to her right into the dining room, chose it, and crept inside. She made her way around the furniture to a door standing open on the far side. Through it she could see a pantry and beyond that through another doorway, a large kitchen.

The pantry was full of boxes, tins, jars, and cans on shelves, most of them bearing quaint, ornate labels. There were even a couple of familiar brands, including a slender brown glass bottle of Crisco cooking oil.

There was no one in the kitchen, and no one in another, smaller and friendlier, dining room beyond. They probably called it a breakfast room, and when the house was built, it might have been called the servants' dining room. A tiny sun porch past the breakfast room was being used as a laundry room, with a washing machine and dryer that were hardly recognizable, and a large glass jug of Clorox, among other items, on a shelf. There was a French door in the laundry room that opened into a backyard as flooded with sunlight as the room itself. The sunlight seemed too bright, even, like a psychotic's grin.

The door was locked; its knob refused to turn. Augusta considered kicking it, decided it would make too much noise and attract the attention of whatever or whomever might be locked inside with her, then decided she didn't have a prayer of surviving whatever was waiting for her here and kicked it anyway. It was like trying to break through a wall. The French door didn't budge, and its glass panes didn't so much as crack.

She set down her shovel and wound cord, drew her gun and fired, and watched a spray of sparks as the bullet bounced off a pane of glass. The side of a tin of soap flakes caved in as the bullet struck it and embedded itself in the wall behind. Better the soap than the Clorox. Few things burned worse in the eyes and nose than spilled bleach.

So much for that. She hadn't expected anything less, and put her gun away, picked up her shovel and cord, and walked back through the breakfast room. Another door stood open to her right, with the giant formal parlor beyond. It seemed that every door had been propped open to let air flow through the house. That was all one could do in the heat and humidity of a Toluca County summer before the advent of affordable air conditioning. In every house, every shop that could, and in all the grand hotels like the Lake View and the Iroquois, the windows and doors were left standing open in hopes of a breeze, while fans inside stirred the air in the meantime.

In a house like this, perhaps nobody was home, because every window was shut tight, leaving only the fans to try, and fail, to cool the rooms and halls. Wouldn't that be nice?

Augusta thought bitterly, but if you're going to hope for the impossible, why not go for broke and wish for a pony?

Here and there she passed doors that probably opened onto closets. She left them closed. Back in the front hall, it was time to go upstairs. There was something somewhere in here she had to see, as much as she dreaded it.

The staircase led to a large room that might be a sitting room, filled with bulky leatherbound chairs and a long sofa, but there were the same dark wooden tables topped with lamps with glass shades, and here was a cabinet filled with prissy figurines protected behind a glass door. The same dark paintings hung on walls between windows where heavy drapes drooped like rain-laden storm clouds. As they had downstairs, in a far corner, walls swelled to accommodate the tower, where a padded bench curved beneath a line of windows. An open door ahead revealed a room whose walls were lined with bookshelves, with a scattering of large chairs and a desk in a corner.

To her right another set of stairs rose up again to a landing, doubled back and rose higher to the third floor.

She saw more fireplaces, and more potted plants, and more ceiling fans and table fans spinning uselessly. The heat here was worse than downstairs.

To the left, an open door in an archway showed a vast bedroom. Large bed, a pair of armoires, dressers, a matching set of chairs and sofa. The master bedroom, certainly. Another fireplace, more plants and grim, ugly paintings. Cautiously, she walked to the door and looked in. In one wall another door opened on a bathroom larger than her apartment's living room. She saw a claw-foot tub big enough for an adult to float in. There was no one in sight.

The stairs to the third floor deposited her in a narrow hallway with doors opening on both sides, three each, and another straight ahead at the end. Of the seven, she counted two closed doors, the one at the end, and the right-hand door nearest the stairs, which rose up another story into darkness. The attic lay up there, or perhaps servants quarters. Maybe both.

The heat here was worst of all, and she felt a bead of sweat roll down across her forehead. On the third floor, light flowed only into the rooms, bedrooms from what she could see, and the windowless hallway itself was darker than anything downstairs. Only a few wall fixtures and lamps on tables would light it at night, but on a lovely and hot summer day from the 1920's, sunlight fell in broad bars through open doorways and showed a sloppy mess on the dark wood floor. She saw a long, wide and dark smear that led from one closed door down the hall to the other.

She heard the buzz of flies, and saw them rise up, float through the sunlight, and settle again, and when she stepped forward, black clouds took to the air, indignant at the disturbance.

The stain on the floor was blood. Augusta avoided it, careful not to step in it, and decided to check the open rooms first. The first, to her left, must be a girl's room, full of frills and quilts, and vases packed with flowers. The second was probably reserved for guests, and was elegant in a plain way. So was the third. She could look into rooms across the hall and saw more bedrooms there. One appeared to have been turned into some sort of artist's studio, with an unfinished painting on an easel, and others, unframed, leaning against the walls. The other was another guest room. Every room was deserted.

That left two closed doors, and whatever rooms lay behind them. Until now, the entire house might as well have been deserted, but there would be something...

What? Someone hurt. Someone else.

Goddammit. This entire time she'd been afraid of her fear, trying not to think and not to feel, and to do that, she had to force the thought of someone's suffering to become abstract and unreal. Here it was, as real as flies and blood, and she was wasting time trying to keep herself together when somebody else needed her.

Dammit. She was here, and somebody needed her help. Dread of what was coming was crushing, but she'd seen terrible things all day, and she could have died already a dozen times.

I am not a scared little bitch too afraid to do what has to be done, so why am I acting like it? Forget being afraid. Try being angry. Fuck this. Here at the end of the hall, she stood close enough to reach the knob of one closed door, so she grabbed it, turned, and flung it open.

She felt her face go blank as the door swung wide, struck a wall and bounced forward, slowed, and stopped. She was staring a bathroom that had once been white – white tiled walls and floor, white sink and toilet, white bathtub, white towels stacked on white-painted shelves, with a small, octagonal window of frosted glass at the end and a brass light fixture blossoming like a strange flower on the ceiling above.

The white bathroom dripped and ran with blood and was alive with flies. None of the blood had dried. Like that in the hall, every drop and smear was fresh.

On the wall by the bathtub something had been scrawled and dribbled down the tile wall. Two words:

YOUR FAULT


	34. Liquid flowing from a slashed wrist

Author's Note: I know it's another short chapter, but it seemed like the best place to end it. I hope you all don't mind...

The message made no sense because it couldn't possibly be meant for her. Your fault? It couldn't be her fault because she didn't know what the hell was going on.

Someone in the bathroom was crying, and because she couldn't see who it was, she guessed they were lying in the tub, which was as large as the one she had seen downstairs. She stood in the doorway, her gaze skipping over the bathroom and its bloodstains. They glistened in the light let in through the window.

The room would be too small to use her shovel as much of a weapon, so she set it and the cord down by the door before she drew her gun and stepped forward, thinking it was better to be safe than... She looked down and saw that she was leaving footprints on the bloody floor. Flies buzzed around her in a roar. There must be thousands, she thought.

"Are you hurt?" A stupid question, but she couldn't think of another way to ask.

The crying went on, and Augusta crept forward, step by step, until she could look in the tub to see its occupant.

She saw a naked young man lying on his side, weeping and covered with flies, so many that he probably hadn't heard her question over their incessant whine and buzz.

She held her gun in one hand, in case – a picture danced through her mind of him suddenly rearing up and trying to bite her – and reached down with the other, slowly, to touch his shoulder. There was so much blood in the bathtub that it ran down toward the drain and disappeared down the pipe, and she could see its source. The young man had slashed his left wrist, and bright red gouts shot out in time to his heartbeat. He had probably done it in his bedroom on that summer day in 1920-whatever, then painted the hall and the bathroom, and probably his bedroom too before he died in the tub. His last act had been to write those two words, whomever they were meant for, on the wall.

When she laid her hand on his shoulder, he gasped and flinched, and rolled away from her, and a pall of flies took flight with a roar. In his surprise, his sobs hitched and he stared at her for a moment, blinking bloodshot eyes. His face was swollen from crying, and his entire body was smeared with blood.

He was thin and muscular, and looked to be in his late teens, or perhaps twenty or twenty one years old. Weeping Mary seemed to delight in the suffering of an awful lot of younger people, thought Augusta, and remembered from her reading at the library that was no surprise at all.

"Pearl?" the young man stared at her quizzically, as though he knew her, and then his eyes went wide. "Pearl, help me!"

Augusta holstered her gun, stood and grabbed a hand towel from the white shelves nearby, then dropped to her knees.

"It won't stop. It won't stop bleeding, and the blood won't dry. Help me," he begged, and began to cry again. He held out his arm. Blood sprayed from the cut across his wrist.

Augusta wrapped the towel around his wrist and tied it as tightly as she could, thinking it wouldn't do a damn bit of good. People who suffered in Silent Hill didn't stop suffering until someone stopped their tormentors. But this man had hurt himself... but for a reason, and he wouldn't stop bleeding until she had taken care of whoever had driven him to suicide.

Which meant he would never stop bleeding, because she still didn't think there would be any hope for _anyone like you._

Who was Pearl? Who had he mistaken her for?

"Come on," she said, and had to work to be heard over his sobbing and the buzz of flies. "Come on and sit up, honey. Tell me what happened."

He let her help him up until he was sitting and resting his head against the edge of the tub.

She asked, "Are you hurt anywhere else?"

"No." Beneath the blood and tears and snot, he was beautiful. "No, but Pearl, dad took him. Dad chased him out of here, and he said he'd kill him. You've got to go, too. You have to get out of here. Get the rest of your family out of here – out of Silent Hill, or else he'll come for you too. I'm so sorry... Go to Ashfield and get on the train and just go wherever you can. There's money in my bedroom you can have, but don't take too much or else they'll be suspicious–"

"Who?" she asked. "Who did your father take away?"

He looked up at her, blinking rapidly. Tears had beaded on his eyelashes. He had seen her through a film of tears, and maybe that was why he had mistaken her for Pearl, whoever that was.

Startled, he sucked in his breath and pushed away from her, slipped in his own pooled blood, and hit the other side of the bathtub hard.

"What? I'm sorry! I'm so sorry... I'm sorry, I thought you were–"

"It's okay. Fine. Don't worry about it, but let me help you. Tell me what's happened here."

His hands flew to his crotch to hide his penis. "But I'm... Who are _you_?"

"I'm here to help you, and that's all you need to know."

He stared at her for a moment, then hung his head. "Nobody can help me."

"You'd be surprised. I'm willing to try, at least."

"I thought you were somebody else," he said quietly.

"I know. You thought I was Pearl. Who is that? Who's Pearl?"

"The housekeeper."

Okay. The housekeeper. She could live with that.

He looked up at her suddenly. "You've got to go! You have to get out of here. I know you were just trying to help, so I won't tell anyone you saw me like this, but you have to leave now! If dad catches you here – if he knew you saw me – if he finds another Negro–"

The young man slumped and went silent, remembering something he had managed to forget for just a second, and his strength seemed to crumble.

"Oh God," he moaned. "Oh dear Jesus, Roddy... What is he doing to you now?"

Roddy. He was upset about someone named Roddy. Augusta watched him fall back onto his side in the tub, and begin to weep again.

Augusta reached down to brush her fingers across the young man's forehead, which was hot and wet to the touch. "Honey... let me help you. What's going on? Who is Roddy?"

"You can't help me," he sobbed. "Nobody can help me ever. He's dead by now. Dad's killed him by now, I know."

Whoever Roddy was, Dad had killed him almost eighty years ago. What was this?

"Tell me who Roddy is."

"He's Pearl's son, and he's – he's my... He's my... friend."

If Roddy was Pearl's son, that meant he was black. The young man's father was upset at Roddy. Angry enough to kill him. Why, though?

Friend.

Friend?

"Why doesn't it stop bleeding...? Why won't the blood ever dry? How long am I going to have to wait before I finally die?"

"Sweetheart, don't say that. Why would you want to die?"

He choked back his sobs, and his body convulsed with the effort. He raised himself up on an elbow, looked at her, and said as though he didn't give a damn if she knew, "Because without him, life isn't worth living."

That kind of friend? Would anything like that have happened back then?

Friend indeed.

If so, now she knew, and that also explained why he was naked. Maybe his father had found Roddy and him together on this fine summer day. Maybe he'd come home unexpectedly, when the two of them had thought they had the house to themselves and all the time in the world to enjoy it...

He nodded at her, and slowly lay back down. His breath blew in and out erratically, as it did when a person stopped crying.

"Is it that plain?" His voice had sunk into a monotone that sounded as though hope had died.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know you, so I can't really say."

"I don't care anymore. We were going to leave and go somewhere else. Chicago or St. Louis, or some big place. Maybe Detroit or New York. Maybe Paris, where they accept this kind of thing. Anyplace but here. Someplace where people didn't know us and where people wouldn't care."

In 1920-whatever, such a place didn't exist, probably not even in Paris, she thought, but kept quiet.

"It's over. He's dead and Dad killed him."

Dad was still killing him. Dad had been killing him for the past eighty years, and would go on killing him until the end of time. Augusta couldn't remember any one of the lynchings in Silent Hill occurring because of something like this. Was this one she'd never heard of?

"I know he hasn't," she said, and in a way, she did.

The young man was sinking back down into whatever place the suffering people of Silent Hill dwelled. His eyes had gone glassy, and he had begun to sniffle. Tears would return soon.

"Honey, I'll go help him." She would, and she would die trying. She knew it. This was what Weeping Mary had planned for her, but... This young man didn't deserve what was happening to him, and Roddy, wherever he was, didn't deserve whatever was happening to him there.

"You can't – help him. You can't – help me either, but – thank you for trying. He's – dead and I'm dead – too, but I wish – I knew – why I won't – stop bleeding..." The catch in his breath interrupted every other word, and he struggled to finish.

This was sick. Oh, sweet Jesus Christ, this was so wrong. No one should suffer like this. Augusta stood and looked down into the tub. The young man was crying again now, and the towel knotted around his wrist was turning red and wet. Flies alighted and took flight, alighted and took flight, again and again. Their constant drone was infuriating and they landed, one after another on the young man in the tub, searching for blood to feed on.

She put her hands on the lip of the tub and leaned down, and waited until the young man noticed and looked up at her.

"What's your name?"

"Mi–Michael – Riley. Michael J–J–John Ri–Riley"

Augusta tried to smile. "Well then, Mr. Riley, I'm going to go and do my very best to help your friend. I hope you and Roddy get to see each other again soon."

He shook his head and looked away, then shut his eyes tight and began to bawl.

Augusta turned on her heel and walked away, grabbing her shovel and cord from their spot by the doorway, and the sound of the young man, Michael John Riley, weeping followed her all the way to the stairs.


	35. The hottest part of the day

She fled the house, down the stairs to the second floor where it was slightly cooler, and down the stairs to the first floor, where it was cooler still. Old furniture in an old house, baking in old heat from sunlight eighty years dark. In the front hall she threw open the door and stepped out into cold mist, and the door slammed shut behind her hard enough to shatter the glass in its windows.

She looked back, mouth set in a hard line and saw curtains pulled tight. If she looked in, she knew she would see the house as it had appeared in 1999, on the eve of Silent Hill's demolition by the wave of mud and ruin and water sweeping down. Turning away, the chainlink cage still trapped her, and as it had led her to the house, it would lead again wherever it would lead, and she had no choice but to follow.

It swept down the stairs, between old trees and pretty lampposts into Cook Street but instead of turning south, now it blazed its trail straight ahead through the square. Augusta followed, and coming closer, she saw this square enclosed by a tall iron fence, with lush trees towering behind. Azaleas as colorful as those along the front of the house behind her pushed through between the fence tines, crying out in purple, white, and red, and blaze orange. There was a large open gate where the path passed beneath an arch, and Augusta found herself in a forested park . A plaque affixed to a granite plinth nearby read _Wesson Square Park._

In the center, the path curved neatly around a fountain, still splashing, with water tumbling from tier to tier to tier, festooned with vines and moss. Emerging on Ferris Street, it turned north, then left, to the west, at the next intersection. The commercial buildings of Pickton Street made their appearance, then receded back into gloom as the path crossed the street, then rose up into space, up over the riverside park, and then the Illiniwak River.

Beneath her feet the chainlink clanged and quivered. Far away to her left, the mangled Massey Street Bridge was a vague shape, almost lost, and halfway across the river it disappeared. That was the part that had fallen as she ran across, she realized, and shuddered. Joseph had been tangled in fallen beams there, and now he must be gone. He would be waiting for her at the house in the Windowbox District, if she lived to meet him there.

Which she wouldn't, but someone had to help Michael John Riley and Roddy, and there was no one else to do it.

I accept it.

Far below her, the Illiniwak River flowed on to Toluca Lake uninterrupted and calm. She wondered what it hid because after all, Silent Hill's houses and shops, its schools and theaters and libraries hid terrible things, and the rivers and lake had been a preferred way to rid the city of bodies in the epidemics of the past. There was even a monument in Rosewater Park to commemorate those whose bodies had been sunk in the lake when there were simply too many to bury at one time. That, and sometimes boats and swimmers and even small planes just sometimes went missing over Toluca Lake, and were never heard from again. What lay beneath the water? Probably nothing good, because she had learned there simply wasn't much good to be found in Silent Hill.

She crossed the river in mist, and when the cage finally alighted again, it came to rest north of the library, in the embrace of tree branches lush with leaves. Then it ran ahead, across a sidewalk and into an intersection where one street ran north and south and another ran straight ahead. She paused to get her bearings. Buildings to her south, a park to the north that bulged up from the riverside greenway. This was Finney Street, which ran along the north edge of Burke Square, two blocks away. If the path ran straight ahead along Finney Street, it would take her past the front steps of First Baptist Church, and beyond that it would run between Silent Hill City Hall and the Hotel Iroquois, and then on through downtown Silent Hill to the Toluca River where it would cross on a bridge and run all the way to the edge of Old Silent Hill on the far side.

Augusta suddenly realized that at the farthest end of Finney Street lay Settlers Park, with I-55 cutting through, and north, across the park from Old Silent Hill lay Wrightwood. In 1999, Wrightwood was where the artists and bohemians lived. In 1920-whatever it was the neighborhood where poor people and black people lived, and was unashamedly called Niggertown. It was the neighborhood where Pearl and her family, including Roddy, would have lived.

Would the path lead there? Had Michael Riley's father done something to his housekeeper's family? Augusta couldn't recall ever reading about anything like that. Racial violence in Silent Hill seemed, as far as she could remember, to be restricted to those three lynchings and the common, million little slaps of segregation, which had thrived every bit as much in the North as in the South.

Walking along Finney Street she passed the park. A tiny block of shops stood to her left, a street appeared, and then she passed between two more narrow blocks, one on either side before the intersection of Finney Street and Glover Avenue appeared. Silent Hill First Methodist Church in all its glory of muted golden brick and white marble hulked into view across Finney Street. She followed along in her cage as tall arched windows kept pace beside her.

The trees were so green, their leaves hanging limply, even as snowflakes fell and melted. Olson Avenue appeared, the church backed up to its sidewalk, and Burke Square unrolled in open space to her left, while First Baptist Church reared up to her right. She saw the poplars in their groves, and saw now they were far from dead. They were bursting with life. Silent Hilda atop her fountain was an indistinct dark shape in the center of the square among its lawns and paths. Across the square, the Robert Black Memorial Auditorium had completely disappeared in the fog.

She stopped and stared up at First Baptist Church. She thought again that she had gone to church here. It was enormous, and had been a mark of pride for Silent Hill when it was finished in 1928, a sign the resort city on the shores of Toluca Lake was a modern capital of leisure, just as trendy and chic as it could be. Rumor had it a mobster from Chicago had financed its construction.

Help me, she prayed again as she had before. You've been by my side the whole time I've been here, or else I'd be dead or stark raving insane. Please walk with me. I need You because otherwise I don't stand a chance. Please hear me, and please guide me, and please be with me. Amen.

She walked on in the quiet. There were flowers everywhere, at the base of every tree, and in huge pots on the church's front portico. It seemed Silent Hill was slowly being overtaken by plant life. The longer she stayed, the greener it got, no matter the falling snow. It probably meant something, but she didn't know what. Maybe something good, as it had been in Summerland Cemetery, and wouldn't that be a refreshing change of pace?

Dear God, help me. Help me do this, whatever it is. I didn't think I could before, and I'm still not so sure now, so it's up to You. Don't let me have come this far for nothing.

She didn't want to leave the church behind, but as she walked along, Silent Hill City Hall emerged on the left, with all its turrets and towers stabbing at the mist, while across Finney Street stood the Hotel Iroquois in all its grandeur. It filled the entire block north of City Hall with its beautiful building, its gardens, its swimming pool and tennis courts. A drive curved in a crescent from Finney Street up to the entrance and back to the street again, and to Augusta's shock, the chainlink cage turned to follow it.

The Hotel Iroquois? What the hell?

The only thing she could remember about the Hotel Iroquois was that it had caught fire and burned to a shell of itself...

...some time in the 1920's.

But what did that have to do with anything? A fire? It had been a disaster, and people had died, and if Weeping Mary had anything to say about it, the people who had died were probably still dying in there to feed her. But what did any of it have to do with Michael John Riley and his friend Roddy? She stared up at it.

Outside, it had been abandoned for five years and left to rot since 1999. On the inside, though, as she had found the Riley house, it would be another hot day eighty years in the past. Outside along the roof the name was spelled out in steel letters attached to a scaffold, but by 1999 the Days Inn sunburst had also glowed in the night in metal and plastic on the building's portico, where once carriages, and later cars, had pulled up to the entrance to spit out their passengers. Inside, no one had ever heard of Days Inn, and the magnificent Hotel Iroquois had never burned down, and never been rebuilt, never faltered and finally failed in the 1970's, never been bought in the 1980's and restored as a modern and clean, but substantially less glamorous choice among Silent Hill's array of lodging.

Inside, it was still by far the most luxurious place to stay when down from Chicago or over from New York or Hollywood to enjoy the delights of Silent Hill. Outside, that mantle had passed back to the Lake View Hotel twenty years ago. Joseph had talked about it often.

Did the fire at the Hotel Iroquois have to do with Michael Riley's father? Had she ever read anything about it? Could she recall anything about it?

She couldn't, and sighed. Whatever it was, she'd either forgotten it or had never known it at all, and why not? There were probably any number of things that no one knew about Silent Hill. The hotel was intimidating and looked back at her with a hundred blank, black windows, the rooms dark behind glass. Some drapes were pulled, she noticed, while others were flung wide. Some windows were open, other closed. The rooms behind open windows would be nothing more than soggy, mildewed ruins now, she thought. Along the first floor arched windows in two long rows on either side of the door looked in on an exercise room and a modest restaurant, abandoned and lightless.

To her left as she walked along the semicircular drive, the front gardens exploded with colors and blossoms. A couple of paths wound randomly through the flowers, and benches placed here and there were engulfed in great clouds of butterfly bushes. To her right a desperately overgrown lawn swept up to bushes and small trees planted along the front of the hotel. Beneath her feet, chainlink struck cracked cement and rattled as it shivered.

Up under the portico, the cage turned abruptly toward the entrance and molded itself to the doorway like the mouth of a parasitic worm. Augusta saw bland glass doors, grimy now, but once they had been made of wood, with a doorman standing at attention to open them with a smile.

She wondered what a doorman in 1920-whatever would have said to her, because while black men and women were permitted to clean the hotel and work in its kitchens and dining room, they would not, under any circumstances, have been permitted to stay there as guests.

She also wondered what a doorman would have worn in the heat of a summer long ago.

What had _An Unwanted County_ said about the fire at the Hotel Iroquois? When had this hotel burned down? It had something to do with the boilers and the water heaters in the basement. Some malfunction...

She couldn't force herself to believe that in reliving torture that had occurred in the 1920's, it wouldn't be connected to another tragedy from that decade.

When she grabbed the handles and pulled, the doors opened only grudgingly, a few inches, then a few inches more, and more, and each time she had to yank at them with a grunt. Pain encircled her head like an ugly crown. Rust flaked down from the door hinges. She stepped inside to find herself in a glass-enclosed vestibule with a pair of luggage carts rusting to one side across from a broken vending machine filled with ruined snacks and a large bin of brochures that had turned to soggy mush. She heard the squeak of a door sliding closed on oiled hinges behind her, turned, and saw a polished, gleaming oak door swinging shut. It had brass handles and hinges, she noted, turned, and the glass box of the vestibule was gone, replaced by an ornate wooden nook with plush padded benches to either side.

Just a little space to baffle the cold or the heat or the wind when the doors were opened.

Again, she thought. It's happening a-fucking-gain. I'm always going back and forth. A giant elegant clock standing in the middle of the lobby was winding backwards, she saw. The hands of all four clock faces swept along faster than she could track them. A bronze statue of Atlas, long since turned green from damp and age, strained under his burden of time in the center of a circle of wooden benches topped by thick velvet cushions.

Augusta walked toward it all, staring at the clock atop the statue, crossing an intricately tiled floor. Bands of color wound back and forth. In 1999, the lobby had been carpeted, and she saw that all the comfortable but blandly modern furniture had been replaced with the sofas and chairs and potted plants of the 1920's. In weak light from the windows they seemed to be waiting for... something, and suddenly crystal chandeliers above and sconces on the walls flared to life.

All the while the silence was broken only by the incessant grind of the clock hands spinning backwards. Augusta turned, watching the lobby change. Straight ahead beyond the clock, a massive wooden check-in desk replaced one of Formica, and grew a stained glass canopy supported by bronze eaves crafted to look like tree branches.. In the rear, a triplet of elevators stood to the left while a staircase swooped down in a graceful curve from the right. Polished bronze doors with some sort complicated pattern replaced plain dulled brass at each elevator.

She saw utilitarian glass walls to the left and right replaced by sets of wide double doors and intricate leaded glass windows set inside archways as the Days Inn's workout room gave way to the Hotel Iroquois's ballroom, and as a plain, modern restaurant was dissolved by an elegant fine dining room that could have been transported from Paris at the height of the Belle Epoche.

Lamps on tables glowed beneath colored glass shades, and rugs unrolled on the floors.

And at last the clock began to tick again, and the statue of Atlas that held it up was polished and new again. She looked up at the clock face and saw that it read 3:17, certainly in the afternoon, in the hottest part of the day, and she suddenly noticed that muted sunlight poured in through closed drapes that had replaced fiberglass blinds. Ceiling fans above, which hadn't been there before, studded a carved plaster ceiling and spun to throw the air against itself. A cool breeze flowed through the lobby.

She thought that if she had stepped into this lobby in 1920-whatever, a black woman in bloody clothes, looking and feeling as though someone had beaten her, a clerk would have summoned the police immediately. Come to think of it, the same thing would have happened in 1999. She looked like hell. The only difference was that then, she would have been thrown in jail. Now, someone would have called an ambulance.

Where now? She was now in a time when someone somewhere in this building was suffering. Dad was killing Roddy somehow, somewhere here.

Where? The clock ticked, and against the tile and wooden walls and plaster ceiling, each tick echoed.

If Roddy had fled the Riley house, why would have come here anyway? How would he have gotten in?

The back door. Some sort of service entrance, but she still didn't know why a young black man looking to hide from a white man angry enough to kill him would have tried to find shelter in a place like the Hotel Iroquois.

Maybe someone he knew worked her – a relative or friend. That would make sense. Who and where, though. The hotel had laundry rooms and kitchens and handyman's supply closets, and they would all be in the basement or toward the back of the building, so that was where she needed to go.

She still didn't think she would survive this, but broke into a run. She didn't know where she would find a door that would lead into the halls and rooms meant to be hidden from the public, and didn't care to look. There was a door behind the front desk and that would do. If it was locked, she would break it down. She ran to the front desk, tossed her shovel and cord across, then clambered over and picked them back up. Her head pounded, and she nearly lost her balance, but managed to stand.

The door wasn't locked, and opened onto a dim hallway lined with glass-walled offices where lamplight glowed between the slats of wooden blinds. Not very far away, the hall intersected with another and there were signs on the wall there pointing the way to the ballroom and kitchen. She hurried ahead to the intersection, and looked left and right to see a hallway stretching ahead to the far ends of the building. Along the way she noticed old-fashioned glass cases set into the walls that would hold fire hoses coiled on metal frames , and saw that at each end there were large doors like those of a cabinet that probably opened onto laundry chutes. There were more doors that must open onto storage. To her right toward the restaurant and kitchen were doors that looked to be those of refrigerators and freezers.

She hesitated. Would Roddy have been thrown into a freezer? Should she check? It didn't seem brutal enough, and worse, back in 1920-whatever, such an act would have interrupted dinner preparations. If Roddy was here, he was somewhere else.

To her left, farther along was an open door. She trotted toward it, the pain in her skull pulsing every time her feet hit the floor, to see a black shaft with cables hanging down through empty space. A small brass plaque on the door read _Maids' Elevator_. Below her in the basement would be the laundry room. It must be there because there was nothing large enough to hold it here. Other doors nearby were marked as storage rooms. When she pressed one of four buttons in a brass plate beside the elevator door, nothing happened. Another plaque on another door nearby read _Staircase_ in elegant script.

She stood for a moment, thinking. What else might be down below? The boiler room, perhaps? You could torture someone exquisitely if you had access to a hot boiler, but in the heat of summer why would you need a boiler? Maybe to heat the hotel's bath water. She didn't know, and opened the door to the stairway.

A set of utilitarian metal stairs led her to a huge room where towering shelves were stacked with sheets, blankets, and towels, and where gigantic, archaic washers and dryers were fit in amid a forest of metal columns supporting the floor of the ballroom above. To her surprise, she found that almost all of the washers and dryers were churning and tossing loads of linens inside. Some sloshed behind glass doors in sudsy water, others tumbled through hot air. It felt like a furnace down here, but large fans spun behind grilles, most of them turned toward a ventilation shaft. They seemed to be trying, but failing, to force the hot air toward the vent, whose shaft likely ran all the way up to the roof. The service elevator, its door standing open and a fully loaded brass laundry cart wedged in the opening, halfway into the elevator car, was nearby.

There was no one here, and she turned to see a wall dividing the room. The basement was split into two large rooms, and in an archway in the wall, two vast doors were closed tight. If opened, the doorway would be large enough to let a truck through. Augusta ran to the doors, which looked medieval, made of thick wooden planks bound with strips of wrought iron and opened with a pair of heavy iron rings.

She pulled, but the doors refused to budge, and an uneasy thought came to mind suddenly. She had seen two laundry chutes upstairs, one at either end of the hall, but only one actually opened into the laundry room, which meant the other was reserved for what? Garbage? A garbage chute might make sense if there was a way to remove heavy loads of garbage from the basement and then the hotel while keeping it out of sight of delicate, well-heeled guests who would object.

She yanked at the doors again. They didn't seem to be locked, only stuck, the wood swollen by the laundry room's humidity.

Or if one chute was meant for garbage, that meant there might be a way to get rid of some of that garbage in whatever room lay beyond these doors. How, though? A crusher? An incinerator?

An incinerator. Dear God. She braced herself with a foot, grabbed one ring with both hands and wrenched it back and forth, nearly screaming from the effort and from the pain rocketing from side to side inside her head. It felt as though her skull was cracking.

And finally the doors burst open, throwing her backward onto the floor where the throbbing pain of her headache flared in a silent white scream that sent tears spilling down her cheeks. She had to use her shovel to brace herself and climb to her feet, and by the time she stood up everything around her seemed to drift back and forth through a watery blur. Panting and leaving on her shovel, she waited until it passed.

If I pass out, I die, she thought. I can't die without at least trying to do something. She raised her head and looked up through the doorway.

Ahead, another vast room was filled with machinery. She saw enormous, convoluted-looking generators, and ranks of water tanks and boilers standing on metal struts. A forest of pipes criss-crossed overhead. A wide aisle ran between them to the far end. Each massive water tank was marked with a warning painted in red. CAUTION: HOT WATER.

At the end of the room, below a large open door in the wall, was a snowdrift of garbage – paper and broken glass, and a broken chair waiting for their turn in a large, evil-looking incinerator nearby beyond the boilers. Volcanic heat rolled out in a lazy billow.

She counted six people grouped in the room. Three white men and a teenaged girl, and two young black men, one of whom was dressed in a waiter's tuxedo and was being held, his arms pinned behind his back by two of the white men, while the other lay on the cement floor trying to shield himself from blows raining down. The third white man was beating him with a pipe. The girl and the young black man in the tuxedo were crying and screaming. The young black man on the floor pleaded and begged. The white man with the pipe shouted as the pipe rose and fell, while the other white men watched in stoic, stony silence. They were clearly not happy at having to touch a black man, as if the color might rub off on their hands and dirty them.

Augusta watched in shock for a moment, then shifted her shovel from right hand to left, reached, and drew her gun. She rushed forward, and in the doorway, hit a wall. When she connected, an iridescent sheen flashed outward in an oily bloom, then faded. She tried again, and watched another rainbow bruise blossom and vanish in the air.

She holstered her gun, grabbed her shovel and swung it back, then hefted it forward. The shovel blade bounced backward, and she had to fight to keep her grip. Over the din from the boiler room, she couldn't be sure, but thought she heard a hum every time the iridescence appeared.

Trying to shoot through the doorway couldn't possibly be a good idea. The bullet would probably just bounce back. Maybe. She didn't know.

She snarled in frustration, watching the beating go on and on. The pipe rising and falling, the young black man in the tuxedo struggling, the girl with her clenched fists begging the man to stop, but afraid to intervene herself.

Augusta looked around her and saw nothing that would help, and finally in desperation, she hid behind the nearest support column, set the shovel down and drew her gun, aimed and fired, and yipped in surprise when the bullet ricocheted and whined past her ear. Iridescence flared, brightly this time.

She holstered her gun and ran back to the doorway, watching helplessly. There was no way to stop it, because she couldn't go through the door.

So, what about the garbage chute? Staring ahead, her heart pounding, and her head throbbing in time, she thought that at least it was another way in. It would be suicide to try it though, but wasn't it suicide to be here at all?

A thought – maybe she could use the chute another way, and turned and bolted for the stairs. At the top she turned and looked down the hall toward the garbage chute and saw a glass case with its fire hose, protection against a blaze in an age before sprinklers. She ran for it, tossed down her shovel and cord, then wrenched open the glass cabinet door.

The hose was heavy and much larger and longer than she expected, and she struggled to lug it to the garbage chute, where she pulled open the chute door, and dropped the hose down into darkness. She ran back to the cabinet set into the wall and pulled the rest of the hose out, watching it hit the floor with heavy thumps.

At the back of the cabinet was a large brass valve, and Augusta reached in to turn it. If this hose sprayed as much water as a modern hose, the beating couldn't continue. It couldn't because everyone there would have to run or else risk being swept off their feet and slammed into boilers or hot water tanks. The valve squeaked and squealed as it turned, and suddenly the hose went rigid as water filled it. Augusta spun the valve until its brass wheel refused to move any further, then looked down to see the hose had inflated and flung out its kinks and bends, as much as it could, and was piping what looked to be a vast amount of water down the hall and then down the chute. She could hear it spraying, and could hear the hose nozzle clanging as it thrashed back and forth inside the garbage chute.

She shivered and panted, swallowing, as she retrieved her shovel and the wound cord. It would have to stop now, she thought.

God help me.


	36. The frozen furnace

Augusta stood, listening to the hose nozzle slamming against the sides of the garbage chute, and stilled when the sound suddenly became muffled, then gasped when a wave of water washed out of the chute and swept down the hall. She looked down to see it spilling over the tops of her shoes.

What? What the hell was this? It couldn't possibly have filled the basement, so was the chute blocked? What could possibly block it completely?

Shit. This meant she would have to go back downstairs and try something else. She wanted to scream, but thought that if that something else involved shooting, she needed to reload her gun, so she swung her backpack around, unzipped and plucked a few bullets from the first box she could reach, and packed the Ruger's clip. She replaced it in its holster and sighed.

As she zipped it closed and slung her backpack around, she thought that the water flowing around her shoes was cold. Very cold, actually, and her heart siezed as she realized that if cold water hit the hot boilers below, they would explode. She slipped and almost fell as she fumbled for the valve to shut off the water, turned it as fast as she could, and watched the hose deflate. Fucking hell. How stupid had this been?

Too bad I can't think of anything else. What will I do if I really can't stop it? What will I do if all I can do is watch?

She ran for the stairs, splashing through water on the floor, following it downstairs, where it had poured down the staircase and swept across the floor of the laundry room. She saw it flowing toward a drain in the floor, drew her gun as if it would do some good, and ran for the huge open doorway. The shovel bounced on her shoulder as she ran, and the wound cord slapped gently against her side.

Sweet Christ, my head hurts. Please, can You do something about it?

At the doorway, she skidded to a halt and stared ahead, gaping, because in the boiler room everything had stopped – frozen in place, including a white sunburst of water erupting from the garbage chute at the rear. Augusta blinked. Her nose suddenly itched, and she brought up a wrist to wipe it, and it came away flecked with tiny bits of dried blood crust. When had her nose stopped bleeding?

She held out a hand, tentatively, to find that whatever had blocked the doorway before was gone now. Stepping inside the boiler room, she held her gun out. With as much of a kick as the Ruger had, a two-handed grip would be better, but she had to keep hold of her shovel.

I don't even know who to aim for.

The teenage girl, who looked the most harmless, stood closest to the door, and Augusta remembered seeing a girl's room in the Riley house. Who was this? Michael's sister? Why would she even be here? Her face was frozen in a scream. She had been begging her father to stop. Augusta circled her carefully, studying her, then turned. Three white men who looked to be in their forties, and two young black men, but something had changed. Before, Michael's father had been beating the young black man, who Augusta presumed to be Roddy, with a pipe. Now, he had tossed the pipe aside and was bending over, halted in place like everything else, as if lifting something heavy. He blocked her view, but she could see the door to the incinerator standing open.

Augusta bolted toward the rear of the room, passing boilers and hot water tanks, and skidded between the men who held the young black man in his tuxedo, and Michael Riley's father. She spun and saw that he was indeed bending to lift something heavy. The other black man, who wore only a pair of dirty khaki pants, had already been shoved halfway into the incinerator. His arms were flung over his head, and his eyes were open, but showed only whites. His mouth hung open slackly, and he could have been dead, but was more likely unconscious. His torso, slender and muscular and beautiful, gleamed with sweat and blood.

Or perhaps he was wide awake and still alive, but had stopped in a moment in time that made it hard to see which. Augusta stared down at him, eyes wide, breath gusting in and out. Beyond the incinerator's open door was a furnace of frozen flames, wrapping around Roddy's legs and bare feet.

He had run all the way here from East Silent Hill on bare feet.

Augusta jammed her gun in her holster and tossed her shovel aside, leaned against a wall beneath a metal sign that read: _USE CAUTION! Overloading the incinerator can cause fires!_

How true. Perhaps this was the reason the Hotel Iroquois had burned down – because someone overloaded the incinerator. She reached down to pull Roddy from the incinerator, bent to grab his wrists, and was blasted back through the cold suspended water bursting from the garbage chute. She screamed, reeling from a swirling storm of images that flooded her mind. Her mouth filled with water, and she turned, staggered out of the hanging cloud of water, and spat it out.

She held her hands to her head, feeling water run from her hair.

Images: Roddy – Radames Abraham Hodges – son of Pearl and Cyril Hodges, naked on a bed with Michael John Riley. They are fucking, but not fucking – it is love, and "fuck" is a nasty word that can't describe what they are doing. Roddy loves Michael and Michael loves Roddy. In the heat of the day, sweat trickles across their skin, and they each taste the salt of the other. In their kisses, their tongues search for one another.

Michael's sister, Annette, bursts through the door of Michael's room. She knows what they do in private, and while she has misgivings, in the end she figures that anything that makes her brother so deliriously happy can't be wrong. Now and again she even joins in their conversations, which they hold while Pearl cleans the house, about how New York or Chicago or Detroit or London or Paris or Berlin would offer a good and happy life to two men who love each other. She doesn't know of any other men who act the way her brother and Roddy act. What she does know is that if _she_ were to ever even consider marrying or bedding a Negro man, her father would beat her to within an inch of her life and send her to boarding school, as far away as possible from Silent Hill.

She also knows that another option would be to accuse the Negro man of rape. In fact, that's all you have to do sometimes, if you want a Negro killed, especially if you don't want to spend the money to send a child away to a far away school. It's worse in the South, of course, but it happens here too. It happens everywhere.

That's how Harrison Sinclair, who was slightly retarded and who never harmed anyone in his life, got himself hanged two years ago. Marcie Gerber, a suspected prostitute and confirmed slut, saw him walking down the street as she drove by in her Ford, picked him up and said she would give him a ride home to Niggertown and then ran from the car screaming rape.

Just wanted to see what would happen, she said, and what happened was that bewildered Harrison Sinclair was taken downtown and put in the jail, and then turned loose by the smirking chief of police to a gathered mob who beat him senseless with a baseball bat someone was carrying, then hanged him from one of the trees on Koontz Street, right in front of Alchemilla Hospital. Then the men in the mob took turns hitting him with the bat, a contest to see how far they could make him swing. The winner got a dollar.

Annette knows all these things, and she knows her father, president of the First National Bank and Trust of Silent Hill, was part of the mob. And so, when she hurls open the door to Michael's room – turns away at the sight of their nakedness – to announce their father has come home unexpectedly, she knows that Roddy had better get himself covered and get himself hidden, or all hell will break loose. She doesn't even want to think about what might happen if their father discovers that _not only_ is his son a Nancy boy, but a nigger-lover – in the most literal sense – as well.

Unfortunately, their father has begun to suspect that something untoward is going on, mainly because Roddy Hodges spends, in his opinion, entirely too much time at the Riley house. He's even there oftentimes when Pearl is not. Mr. Riley bounds up the stairs. He came home because he forgot a sheaf of legal papers in his library, but when he saw the startled fear on his daughter's face, he knows something is wrong.

Annette isn't fast enough, and before she can hear her father coming up the stairs, whirl and slam Michael's door shut, he sees his son and Roddy naked, sweaty and slick and gleaming in the sun coming in through a window. He is stunned, and for a moment he and Annette stare at one another in wide-eyed horror. Behind the door, Michael and Roddy stare at one another, abject terror on their faces.

Mr. Riley's shock turns to rage and he storms to the door, hurls his daughter aside, turns the doorknob and heaves open the door. The knob punches a hole in the plaster when it hits. Roddy is scrambling to pull on a pair of pants, the same filthy pants he wears to his job. In the summers he works with a mechanic in Wrightwood. A nigger, and the only one in town willing to fix the other niggers' cars when they break down.

All Michael can think to do is burrow under his quilt to hide his nakedness. His father rages into the room, but before he can reach Roddy and beat him until his skull splits open, Roddy has sprinted past him, into the hall and down the stairs, leaving his shirt, his suspenders, his cap and shoes and underclothes behind on the floor. Michael watches his father turn slowly toward him.

"You, I'll deal with later," he says with quiet threat, and turns on his heel. He can't look at his son right now. Can't even stand to think of what he's just seen. In the hall he grabs Annette by the arm.

"You _knew_ about this, didn't you. I can see it on your face. Come with me."

Annette resists, and her father squeezes her arm hard enough so that she thinks he might break it.

"Come with me," he says again, and he drags Annette down the stairs.

"I have an idea where he's going, and so that's where we're going. You are going to say he tried to rape you, and we'll get this taken care of before it gets much farther along."

It's almost frightening how quickly the idea came to him, but it's a good one and he'll use it.

Roddy's brother, William Shakespeare Hodges, works as a waiter at the Hotel Iroquois, and Roddy will likely try to find shelter there, with his brother. Lots of niggers work at the Hotel Iroquois. The place crawls with them. They're all alike, and they'll try to hide one of their own, no matter how despicable a crime he commits. Thankfully, Mr. Riley knows the hotel's owner and manager well. They will help him, especially if Annette will say what he wants her to say. The notion of white womanhood violated is enough to boil to the blood of any man who would call himself American.

Michael Riley in a bathtub running with blood that never dries, where the flies swarm and drone and buzz endlessly in the heat. He feels this is his fault.

Annette Riley watching her father kill, wrapped in boiling guilt because she said what her father wanted her to say. She feels this is her fault.

Willy Hodges watching his brother being beaten to death, watching him shoved alive into the incinerator. He couldn't help him because there are only so many places to hide in the hotel, and the owner and manager, and Mr. Riley know them all. Willy feels this is his fault.

Roddy Hodges burning in the incinerator. He's alive and conscious, frozen in the split-second between screams. It makes him look deceptively at peace. He thinks again and again, Michael I love you. Michael, I'm sorry. If I go to heaven I'll wait for you.

He knows this is his fault. His burning body – his flesh and what little fat there is on his body – is too much for the incinerator. It was never designed to burn something as large as a human body. It was never designed to burn the grease and oil a body can generate, which creates too much heat, which creates a crack, and a bolt pops out, and the whole thing explodes in a vast cloud of flames that search out every vent and shaft, racing through the hotel to set it ablaze in minutes.

And then, upstairs are all the guests of the Hotel Iroquois who burned to death. They don't know what happened, and never will. All they know is that they're burning, although one man who tried to escape the flames in a full bathtub is boiling.

Augusta blew out her breath in a scream, and hadn't realized she had clutched two handfuls of her hair in her fists. She looked up – and when had she sunk to the floor? – her mouth open, her bottom lip quivering.

Mr. Riley stood over Roddy, his face stretched into a gargoyle's rictus of hate. Augusta drew her gun as she leapt to her feet, and shot him once and then again. Hollowpoint bullets entered through tiny holes and exited from gaping craters, just as they were designed to do. Most of Mr. Riley's head disappeared in a burst of red. When blood and bits of flesh hit the incinerator, they sizzled.

Nothing changed. Augusta holstered her gun and reached down to try again to pull Roddy from the incinerator.

Her fingers touched his skin. Michael I love you, Michael I'm sorry. I love you. I'm sorry. She pulled and nothing happened. It was like trying to bend steel girders. She tried again, and still nothing.

"DAMN it!" she wailed through clenched teeth, and stood. She turned toward Mr. Riley and stared at him. Why wasn't this over? She had shot him in the head, and then reminded herself that she had shot a lot of things in Silent Hill, and killing _things_ in Silent Hill was never as easy as it seemed.

So, what now? And, what the hell was that? What's happening?

Something, a thick black liquid, was flowing from the holes in Mr. Riley's skull. As she watched, black trickles emerged from his nostrils, dripping over his lips, joining a stream pouring out between his teeth. A black tear spilled from his right eye, and then another from his left, tracing dark lines down his cheeks. There was more of it coming from his ears.

She looked down and saw a black puddle growing on the floor, looking like spilled oil. She shuddered and felt goosebumps prickle along her arms, even in the heat.

Nothing else moved in the boiler room. Annette, Willy, Roddy, and the owner and manager of the hotel stood motionless, stopped where they stood. Augusta sidestepped between the puddle and the two men who held Willy Hodges's arms pinned behind his back, then turned to back away, taking care to keep the oily black puddle in view. Whatever this was, it couldn't be good. Dear God, how much of it could there possibly be? Now it was pumping from his wounds, splattering the incinerator and running down its surface to the floor. Unlike blood, it did not sizzle.

It was time to find some way to get rid of whatever it was before it _did _something. Her shovel would help – maybe she could scoop it up and toss it in the incinerator – but she had left it leaning against the wall, and she would have to go back to get it. She hesitated for a moment, then ran forward and leapt across. The puddle was growing quickly, and slid around the shoes of the hotel manager and owner, and Willy Hodges.

She grabbed her shovel, turned, and bent to scoop up the mess on the floor.

It shied away from the shovel blade, parting in a wide crescent. A ripple passed over its surface.

This is not good. She tried again and black puddle neatly slid away. She pulled the shovel away, lifted it, and lay it across her shoulder. Time to find something else. She would have to jump over it again, because here she was backed against the wall and the water in its frozen spray.

She took a deep breath, stepped back and prepared to jump, leapt, and crashed to the floor when something grabbed her ankle and squeezed. Hard. She lay on the floor stunned, spots dancing across her vision. Her skull throbbed, and seconds passed before she could even think to yank her foot free.

When she pulled, the thing clamped around her ankle only squeezed harder. She kicked at it, turning to see a hand emerging from the puddle, its fingers slick and black, wrapped tight.

"Oh, Jesus." The puddle rippled and flowed, and a shape rose up from it slowly, looking vaguely like a hooded figure. The hand rose with it, still clutching her ankle, pulling her along, across the floor and up into the air. Black liquid still spurted from Mr. Riley's shattered skull, and ran in sheets across his clothes, down the front of the incinerator, and across Roddy's still form.

One leg in the air, she lay on her back looking up at shiny blackness taking shape. A head and two arms, glistening, took form, but below what should have been a torso, the shape was anemic and thin. Augusta thought of Weeping Mary outside of Summerland Cemetery, with her upper body that of a woman and a long, fat snake's tail below. She snarled and thrashed, trying to free her foot.

Abruptly, the oil pouring from Mr. Riley's wounds stopped, the last black drops running down to the floor. The shape pulled the puddle from the floor into itself as ripples, almost tiny waves, raced up and down. Augusta yanked her foot, but couldn't free it, and drew her gun.

Features began to form on the head. She could make out a nose, and twin hollows for eyes. A slit for a mouth opened wide in a grotesque yawn, and she saw that it had teeth.

She shot it in what should have been its chest. The bullet passed through, throwing out droplets that hung in the air for a moment, then flew back into the mass, as if it couldn't bear to part with even the smallest bit of itself.

It began to blanch and, spreading out from the hand with itsgrip like a vise,harden, slick oil thickening into something like leather. The head turned toward her, and two eyes opened, showing white. The mouth formed a smile. Black to brown to tan to the pale of a white man's skin. The face was familiar, that of Mr. Riley.

"Hello, Pearl," it said. "Do you know what your son's been up to today?"


	37. Mr Riley and the washing machines

"I'm not Pearl. I'm not your housekeeper."

It looked momentarily surprised, blinked, and said, "My, you certainly do look like her. I mean, all you niggers look alike, but you and her _really _do resemble one another."

It was more solid than before, and she noticed that beneath its torso its form wasn't simply anemic. Below a certain point, it simply stopped, a white cord of spine dangling down from the trunk above. A large flap of skin hung down to hide whether or not the spine fell out of a mess of torn meat, but it appeared as though Mr. Riley had been cut in half when the incinerator exploded, and while the top half was present, the bottom was nowhere to be found.

Would shooting it hurt it? Probably not, she considered, and thought that the black slop that formed it would just come spurting out of the bullet hole. She needed something that would hurt _all _of it, all at once.

Its eyes narrowed. "If I can't get my hands on her, you'll do. Someone has to _pay _for what that woman's black ape of a son did to my boy..."

And there it was, she thought. No hope there for anyone like you. No hope for a black woman, especially not for one who bore a resemblance to a woman, Pearl Hodges, who had probably been dead for decades.

Clutching her ankle, it looked at her, wearing a vacant grin, its eyes slightly glazed. She looked back at it with wide eyes. If it wanted to, it could probably impale her with the naked bone at the end of its spine.

It yanked her leg, pulling her toward it, and suddenly its face was rushing toward hers. It could strike like a snake, with the bone of its spin whipping back and forth. She drew breath to scream and brought her arms up to protect her face. When it sank its teeth into her shoulder, she howled.

She was still clutching her gun but had the presence of mind to realize that if she tried to shoot it, this close, that she would either shoot herself in the head by mistake or at the very least, blow out an eardrum.

Dear God, it hurt – it was gnawing her shoulder. It let go of her ankle, and she felt its arms scrabble across her chest, tangling in the cord from which her flashlight hung, clutching fistfuls of her T-shirt. Its spine curved and struck between her legs, but didn't pierce the tough denim of her jeans. Instead, it hit the floor and slid beneath her, and she could feel it, hard and sharp, scraping the concrete under her right thigh.

She managed to raise her arm, then bring the butt of her gun down squarely on its temple.

It wore a shocked look on its face, its mouth bloody from where it had, in its enthusiasm, apparently bitten its tongue. It stared at her as though stunned she would dare try to resist it.

"Why, you uppity nigger bitch." She could feel its breath puffing across her cheek. It smelled rancid, as though it had been eating long-dead things.

"You niggers are all the same. Just a bunch of monkeys," it said, "And all you nigger women are good for is fucking."

No hope for anyone like you. This was a common thing to happen in 1920-whatever, and it had been a common occurrence since the earliest days of slavery. Augusta wondered for a moment if it had ever really happened to Pearl.

Its not-quite-tail, not-quite-spine was wrapping around her leg.

How could it rape her? It didn't have a –

The thing wrapping around her leg squeezed. Spines shouldn't be able to bend that way. It grinned.

Christ and all the saints. If she could stand, she would have a better chance to fight it.

"_Get off me!_" she shrieked at it, and heard it laugh at her. She twisted away from it, struggling to pull herself across the concrete floor. If she could stand... If she could grab her shovel from the spot where it lay on the floor... If there was enough room to swing it...

It pulled her back. Her arms were above her head. She clutched the gun with both hands and brought it down on its forehead. It snarled and spat at her, but its boa constrictor coil around her leg loosened. She thrashed and kicked, scooting across the floor and pulling it along with her. It grabbed at her breasts, gave them both a hard squeeze. The pain was not nearly as bad as the obscenity of it.

When she tried to hit it again with the butt of her gun, it blocked her, then grabbed for her arms. She pulled them away, still kicking, still trying to throw it off.

It lunged, and bit her again. She screamed.

It was trying to coil around her leg again, but she braced herself with the leg it wasn't touching – wasn't _contaminating _– and heaved herself over. Teeth sunk into her shoulder, it rode along, its arms wrapped around her in a vile embrace.

It wouldn't let her stand. Every time she tried it swept her leg out, and she fell on it again and again. Its teeth worked on her shoulder, and if the fabric of her T-shirt gave way, it would chew all the way down to the bone.

It fucking hurt.

A series of jerky thrusts took her to the rank of hot water tanks standing in a row. What few coils of its intestines remained shook loose and fell open in wet, flabby loops. A twist and a roll slammed its back against hot metal. It screamed in her ear, and the coil around her leg went limp. The wetness on her shoulder was its bloody saliva. It grabbed at her as she tried to pull away from it. She shoved it against the water heater and yanked her leg away, and lurched backward, away from it.

Her left foot came down on the handle of her shovel when she tried to stand, her leg twisted, and she went down again.

It was coming for her. Whether it would hurt it or not, she fired at it, emptying the Ruger's clip.

Bursts of black slime erupted from every hole. The bullets sang, metal on metal, as they struck the water heater, but they had mushroomed on their journey through the thing that wore Mr. Riley's face, and had lost their force. Still, one hit with enough strength to punch a tiny hole in the water heater, and a little fountain of boiling water shot out in a graceful arc. The water hit between its shoulder blades and it screeched in pain.

It was pulling itself toward her, away from the hot water spilling onto its back, its slime gathering to itself to make it whole again.

Augusta holstered her gun as she stood, snatching up her shovel as she rose and turned to run. Make it to the door. Slam it shut. Maybe, with that not-quite-spine instead of legs, it wouldn't have enough leverage to push it open.

She ran, and behind her it sprang again, but couldn't push itself far enough to grab her again, so it screamed a scream that rang in her ears.

Water heaters passed on her right, boilers on her left. She reached the doorway and threw herself through it, tossed her shovel down and used both hands to grab the open doors. She tried to slam them, put all her strength behind it, but they were too swollen by humidity. And they were blocked by the thing's arm. Right behind her, it reached for her. There was a crunch, a very satisfying sound, as the doors hit. She pulled one door back and slammed it forward again against its twin. And again and again and again.

"_DIE_!" she screamed at it. "Just fucking _die_ already!"

YOUR FAULT written on the wall in blood that refused to dry. When she pulled the door open to slam it once again, the broken arm darted away and disappeared. The door jammed against its twin, and Augusta threw her weight against it, shoving it forward until it refused to budge.

On the other side, in the space between the doors and the concrete floor, she could see it moving, and saw its fingers reaching through the gap. She could hear it yelling.

"I'm going to _GET_ you, and when I do you're going to so very sorry..."

She brought her foot down on the searching fingers. It squawked in pain and the fingers withdrew. If they reached out again, she would try to slice through them with her shovel blade.

It didn't seem to have enough strength to push the door open.

This isn't over. It's not over until it dies or I immobilize it.

And how do I do that? Bullets don't hurt it because it just pulls itself back together again.

The gun had been just about goddamned useless, she thought angrily, and remembered that one of the monsters she had met in Silent Hill had to be prayed to death. Another had to be crushed under a bookcase. One had to be blown up, and Augusta reconsidered. If Becky Taylor could be killed by an explosive reaction, it was possible she could have been hurt by bullets. And perhaps if she'd had the gun with her on board the Little Baroness, she wouldn't have had to play a perverse game of golf with Joshua Blackwell's head and her shovel.

Well, I've just talked myself out of putting this gun on the floor and seeing how far I can kick it. Dandy. What will kill that fucker on the other side of the door?

It had to be something that would hurt all of it, all at once. Immobilize it indefinitely. If she could get it inside one of the water heaters, or maybe the incinerator... If she got close to it, however, it would just coil its not-quite-spine around her legs, or maybe try to stick it inside her while it chewed a hole in her throat.

Every place where it had bitten her throbbed in time to the pain in her head. It seemed every nerve above her waist was screaming an alarm. She felt very tired, and very old as she bent to pick up her shovel. The coiled cord worn on one shoulder like a purse strap swung forward, and when she stood, shovel handle in hand, it swung back into place.

The coiled cord with one end hacked off, wires exposed. She looked down at it, and noticed for the first time that the fluorescent orange of its plastic casing and that of her shovel handle were nearly the same.

Electrocute the son of a bitch. All she had to do was plug it in and slip the exposed wires under the door.

That might work.

The fingers were searching again, reaching through the gap. With a grunt, she stomped on them again and they withdrew. On the other side of the door, their owner muttered blackly.

She held the coiled extension cord in her hands and stared at it. Its plug had three prongs, and unfortunately, no electrical outlet from the 1920's would be able to accommodate that. Three-pronged outlets and three-pronged plugs hadn't been introduced until some time in the 1970's. Or was it the '80's?

No matter. She braced the plug against the doorframe, and pounded it once, hard, with her first. The offending third prong bent. When she hit it again, it snapped off.

Instant compatibility, she thought. The two remaining prongs were the same size, and would fit in any outlet, including one, primitive-looking and housed in a rectangular metal box on the wall nearby. A slender metal pipe, probably filled with wires, snaked up the wall, where it joined others from other outlets that all turned and led away toward a giant fuse box in the distance.

She plugged in the cord and looked down. The fingers were there again, scrabbling along. She could hear it grumbling.

When she touched the exposed wire to the fingers, the lights in the laundry room dimmed. The fingers were immediately snatched away and their owner screamed.

"_YOU GODDAMNED BITCH – THAT HURT!"_

The doors shuddered as it threw itself against them, but its fingers didn't reappear. It knew better. In its rage, it wanted to batter the doors open and spring out at her – gnaw through that skin the color of dark chocolate and open a hole in her throat.

The doors would hold for the meantime, Augusta thought, but she still needed a way to kill it, and electricity seemed the best way. She couldn't just throw the cord through the gap between the door and the concrete, because the thing that had been Mr. Riley might have presence of mind to grab hold of a portion still safely wrapped in orange insulation and pull until the plug popped free and it could drag the whole thing under the door.

Augusta ran it through in her mind and concluded she didn't want to engage it in a tug of war.

Which left what? Head pounding, she glanced toward the washing machines, watching and listening for a moment to linens sloshing in gallons of soapy water behind glass doors.

Water. She walked to the nearest washing machine, grabbed its door handle and pulled, and a flood of warm water poured out. Immediately it ran a course toward a drain in the floor, the same drain where a stream of water from upstairs had slowed to a trickle. Augusta bent and gathered several sopping towels from inside the washer and slapped them down on the drain, blocking it.

It wouldn't plug it completely, but it would be enough.

The doors shuddered again as it threw itself against them, the began to pound on them with its fists. It screamed, but she didn't care to listen to what it might have to say.

She opened another washer door and then two more, and watched the water rush out, run toward the drain, then flood and spill toward the door. As it crept closer to the cord she had left lying on the floor, she stepped away from the washing machines, leaving wet footprints behind her on dry concrete.

The water touched the wire at the same moment it slipped under the door. The lights dimmed again, and then one by one the bulbs overhead exploded as on the other side of the door,whatremained of Michael Riley'sfathershrieked in a way that tortured the ears and must have ripped strips from its throat. Dancing sparks rode bursts of light through the gap between the door and the floor, while on the washing machines needles of indicator dials bounced back and forth in a panic.

Steam began to drift through the crack into the laundry room, and it was tinged with the odor of burning meat.

After several seconds, from the other side of the door came a final sound, something like a belching croak and then all she could hear were the dryers turning with their loads of laundry, the washing machines churning as though nothing had happened, and the throaty hum of electricity coursing over the metal of those machines that knew better.

On the other side of the door, Augusta realized, what remained of Mr. Riley would have cooked, whatever parts that touched the water moist as though fried, the parts that did not well-roasted. His eyes would have burst in their sockets or burst from their sockets and flown away, and his tongue would have been bitten in half.

She had seen it on television one night, a true-crime show on cable that discussed in detail what exactly can happen to an electrocuted body.

And at that moment the bulbs that remained lit above went out, and the boiling heat of dryers,boilers, and water heaters, and an incinerator that exploded eighty years ago vanished into the damp black chill.


	38. The Christmas present

When a single fluorescent light buzzed to life overhead, the feeling of vast space vanished. Augusta recoiled as she saw why.

She looked around the small room, feeling sweat jell on her skin. There was the furnace in a far corner, the trunk from which branches of pipes and ducts curled away to wherever it was they went. There was the long sturdy table in the center, with a collection of flowerpots scattered on its top. She saw shelves crammed with junk and tools, and a few pieces of old furniture. She saw the washer and dryer, by far the newest objects down here. She saw the steep staircase leading down along one wall.

She had always hated that staircase. It was too steep, and hauling full baskets of laundry up and down had always been an exercise in dread. Would this time be the time she would trip and break out her front teeth when she slammed into the concrete floor at the bottom?

It had been one of the few things she had ever disliked about the brownstone on St. Germain Avenue.

The basement was cool, but the drying sweat on her skin made it cold. Why was she here? _How_ was she here? The Hotel Iroquois had disappeared, and if this really was the basement of the house she shared with Joseph, it was several blocks to the south.

I don't understand. I don't understand what's happened here.

But I didn't understand it when I stepped through a picture frame on a riverboat that sank in 1918. What else is new?

Another thought – if this really was the brownstone, Joseph might be upstairs. He told her he would wait for her here. Then a realization – if he was here, she would have to kill him, and that would finally end all of this. With no threat left to her child, she could take Kitty home. She could leave Hell.

She reloaded her gun, noticing the blue rose lying atop boxes of bullets inside her backpack. All things considered, it was faring well, which seemed important. Zipping up her backpack and slinging it back into place, she holstered the gun.

It might be close to over. It really might be... Everything she'd had to endure since she parked her truck and stepped out. All the pain, all the suffering people, and the evil thing that relished it all and fed upon it.

Time to go upstairs, but the weight of the shovel on her shoulder reminded her – this house was old, its rooms were somewhat small and full of furniture. Throughout most of the house, there wouldn't be room to even swing the shovel without it impacting a wall.

So, she would need another weapon, something smaller that wouldn't take as much time or space to use. She had the gun, but it hadn't done much to prove its worth yet, though, she thought, hope does spring eternal after all.

Along with the flowerpots, she saw a few of her old gardening tools lying on the table. She had used them to cultivate her windowboxes with their lilies, all her potted plants, and the flowers she grew in the tiny scrap of yard in the back.

One caught her eye – it had four metal tines that looked something like a bony hand frozen into a claw. She walked to the table and grabbed it, feeling its weight and the plastic handle cool in her hand.

There was so much she would think of later, she considered. All these people with all their pain. Fear for herself and for her child, and here and there just a bit of hope. The Blue Lady and Weeping Mary helping or hindering as she ricocheted through a nightmare.

Later. Now, all that mattered was that she was close to the end if she really was here. She didn't know how she had gotten from the hotel to here, but however it was, it saved time and that could only be a good thing. Once rid of Joseph, with the one thing that could hurt her child dead and gone, the Blue Lady would give her back her daughter and she could go home. The angel who had protected Mary-Elizabeth all this time could finally let her go.

The stairs did not creak as she climbed, because they, like the rest of the house had been built to last. The house had been so sturdy, she could hardly believe it had been destroyed along with the rest of Silent Hill. At the top, she opened a door and stepped into the kitchen.

Everything around her had taken on the hazy, almost narcotic quality of a dream, and so she didn't jump, didn't gasp, didn't scream when she saw the Blue Lady standing at the head of the kitchen table, her back to Augusta.. The placemats and salt- and peppershakers had been swept aside and lay scattered on the brick floor. One placemat lay draped across the back of a white-painted wooden chair.

A man lay on the kitchen table, pinned by what could only be a sword, like a butterfly to corkboard. The hideous choked gurgling Augusta heard seemed to be coming from his open mouth, which worked, but failed, to make words. In one hand he clutched a large knife and waved it weakly at the Blue Lady.

Perhaps clutched wasn't the right word, she thought. It looked like his skin had melded around the knife handle, his fingers and most of the handle hidden in a lump of pale flesh.

For an instant the kitchen blurred, and its fixtures and appliances switched places with those from another era, much older. Hard winter sunlight replaced the mist rolling by outside the windows along the far wall straight ahead. Only the fireplace, ahead and against the wall to her left stayed the same. For an instant, and then the mist returned outside, while a modern white range and refrigerator bathed in the light of high-wattage bulbs inside.

And there, of course, was the midget fluorescent light, its glow slightly tinged with purple over one window. Her grow light, and she'd almost forgotten it. She saw a row of African violets lined up on the sill, each planted in an oversized coffee cup.

The Blue Lady wore a short, pale blue dress with a pattern of large blossoms – roses, it appeared – in darker blue. She wore a sheer, short-sleeved silk shirt the color of the sky, open like a jacket. On her feet were a pair of high thick-heeled sandals the color of faded denim. Her hair was pinned up and held in place by a complicated collection of pins set with sparkling sapphires, the same jewels that winked from each earlobe when she turned.

Her features blurred when she moved, as if viewed through a sheet of water. Everything blurred. When she spoke, the room vibrated. The power of her voice was tightly contained. If let loose, every bit of wood in the house would burst into splinters, every brick and block of stone would be ground to dust.

"_Daughter, when you fight in my name, you strengthen me. When you come to the aid of the suffering, you strengthen me. When you pray, and when you hope, and when you struggle onward, you strengthen me. Before, all I could do was protect you, and keep your child safe and away from all this. Release another suffering soul, and I will fight for you. I will hold you in the palm of my hand."_

Augusta reeled against the force of the Blue Lady's quiet voice. If she pitched backward, she would fall down the stairs. It's like a trance, she thought. She's hypnotizing me. Or something. I wish I knew what it was.

The Blue Lady extended her arm, balancing a large box wrapped in old-fashioned Christmas wrapping paper on her open palm. It hadn't been there before.

Augusta stared at the box. The wrapping paper had a pattern of silly cartoon Santas printed on it, and was tied with a fluffy green velvet ribbon that blossomed into a giant bow.

"_Free the Innocent trapped here, and we will reach the end. The guilty suffer in this place, but those without guilt suffer most. You've suffered enough."_

Who doesn't have guilt, Augusta wondered. I've got plenty. My child is dead because I killed her years ago.

"_You asked, and forgiveness was given to you freely. You have no guilt."_

Augusta flinched as her mouth dropped open.

The Blue Lady regarded her calmly, arm outstretched. Behind her, the kitchen changed and changed back. Snow and fog to sunlight. Sunlight to snow and fog. New to old to new again.

I'll think about it later. I'll think about what she just said later. Why do I feel so dazed? It's like trying to move underwater – why is that?

As she set her shovel down and left it leaning against the wall, she realized she could hear her pulse, calm and steady, in her ears. It seemed to take too long for the gardening tool, so like a tiny rake, to hit the floor when she dropped it. She reached forward and took the box.

"_Take it upstairs. Someone's been waiting for it there since 1939."_

1939 – the year an epidemic of a particular horrific birth defect struck Silent Hill. She'd read about it at the library.

She had read about something else there, too – in the list of crimes, the record of violence that seemed to roll on forever. A stabbing death the day before Christmas Eve on St. Germain Avenue... Had it been here, at this house? She wondered, glancing at the man with his hand melted around a knife, because the realtor never mentioned anything of the sort. But then, it was a long time ago.

She was walking, doing what needed to be done, going where she needed to go. The box in her hands was heavy. Something inside was moving weakly, and thumped against its walls from time to time.

How many times had she mopped this floor? The mortar between the bricks always took longest to dry. She crossed the kitchen to a swinging door that opened onto the living room.

The fireplace, a sofa and loveseat and enormous plush chair all in a pattern of red with gold stripes, or gold with red stripes depending on how you wanted to describe it. The big-screen TV and VCR, and a bookshelf stocked with nothing but movies to watch on cold nights and rainy days. More plants, lovingly tended. The grandfather clock belonged to her. She had bought it with her own money, so why had she left it behind? Framed maps hanging everywhere. Joseph and Augusta both loved maps.

The staircase was to her left. The living room as she remembered it looked superimposedagain for just an instant. The furniture was different, heavier and looming, creations of dark wood and leather. A Christmas tree stood in a corner, lightless but blanketed in ornaments of all kinds and colors, a mound of wrapped gifts heaped beneath. Flames consumed a pile of logs in the fireplace, which suddenly went dark, and the living room returned to normal.She and Joseph had made love on so many occasions on the rug in front of that fireplace.

Sometimes in the summer they would turn the air conditioning down as cold as it would go, so they could start a fire when they both came home from work and let the fire warm their naked skin. Augusta remembered Joseph's hairy chest, and the little curls of black hair in a line down across his stomach to...

She was climbing the stairs now. The runner changed from the design she remembered to a busy floral pattern and back again. At the top, the stairs deposited her into a hallway that split the second floor in half. Two bedrooms and a half-bath opened up on her right, a giant full bathroom and the master bedroom to her left. Of course the person waiting for this box would be in the master bedroom. Where else would they be?

The door was the farthest down on the left. The maps hung on the walls here became grim-faced portraits a century or more old, and then the maps returned. The thing inside the box kicked weakly and made a mewling sound. It was alive, obviously, but wouldn't be alive much longer, it seemed. Either that, or it shouldn't be alive at all.

This is what they mean when they say someone's in a reverie, she thought. I'm not under my own power here at all. This place is filled with the Blue Lady, and its as if the entire house is holding its breath. I'm like a burst of electricity moving along a wire. I started there and when I get here, something explodes.

The bedroom door was open, and what lay inside was not familiar. The bed was far too small, for one, and had a beautiful wrought iron headboard she had never seen before. The bureaus and dressers, and a table with a chair were all unfamiliar. And of course the woman in the bed didn't belong there either.

A knife had been driven like a stake through her heart, impaling her, and her throat was slit to the bone, which showed white and slick amid the red of her open throat and all the blood that poured from it. She wore an old-fashioned nightgown, and her hair was pinned up the way it always seemed to be on actresses in World War II movies. Her arms rose weakly, hands flutteringthen dropped. Blood had soaked the mattress and fallen in a cascade to the floor, where it had pooled on a large Oriental rug. When Augusta walked across the floor it sounded as though she were walking on spongy-wet grass.

The woman tried to turn to look at her, her head lolling too far from one side to the other. Her mouth shaped two words, the same two words over and over.

"My baby," she tried to say, but no sound emerged.

Augusta set the box on a table beside the bed, where a fancy lamp spilled soft light over a heavy water glass, and a framed black and white portrait of a smiling couple. She brushed them aside to make room, then untied the bow, slit the wrapping paper around the lid with her thumbnail, then lifted off the lid to look at the monster inside.

Ichthyosis fetalis – harlequin fetus.It was described in the book _Laws of Other Worlds_ at the library. In locations suspected of unusually high levels of supernatural energy, strange things were known to happen often. In Silent Hill, not only did the Little Baroness vanish in 1918, but in 1939 more than a dozen babies were born, in a single month, with a birth defect that ordinarily presented in next to none of the population.

Considering that ichthyosis fetalis had no external causes, it was theoretically possible for nineteen women to have had an affair with the same man, all gotten pregnant, and all given birth to a grossly deformed baby, but the chances of every woman carrying the gene that would allow it were beyond astronomical. It wasn't possible, but Augusta thought it must have been what this woman's husband, what this baby's father, had concluded. And the result of that conclusion was a killing rage.

The creature inside was covered with yellowish plates of nail, and in every spot where a newborn's skin would dimple or bend, the plates were broken open and had scraped the tender flesh inside raw. The eyes were red pulp, and the mouth, pulled open into a parody of a grin, was little more than a raw red hole. Pus oozed from every crack, and the baby had a familiar wet, metallic odor.

Augusta stared at it grimly. It had been stabbed in the chest, likely with the same knife its father had used to kill its mother and nearly lop off her head. It was impossible to tell if it was male or female.

It made a sound, a strangled mew, and kicked. Two plates of its keratin shell clicked against one another.

Augusta reached inside the box and picked it up. Warm pus oozed across her fingers as she saw a wet patch on the floor of the cardboard box. Had she taken much longer to reach the bedroom, pus would have begun soaking through cardboard and wrapping paper and ribbon, onto her hands as she carried the box along. She bent, and the woman in the bed followed her with her eyes. Tears spilled across her cheeks.

"My baby," Her mouth formed the words as her arms reached. She was trying to rise, but the knife prevented it. Augusta cradled the baby in one arm and yanked out the knife with her free hand. The woman rose up immediately and her head flopped forward. The ragged edges of her throat met with a slap. She reached for her baby, and Augusta laid it in her arms.

The woman hugged it tight, closing her eyes.

Augusta stepped back. Echoes screamed at each other.

"You're wrong! It's not like that – that's not what happened! Please, can't you just let it be? It's bad enough – It's bad enough, please don't make it worse by saying I did something I could never do. How could you even think that, Louis?"

"I know what happened, so don't try to feed me this bullshit nonsense. All these women having all these _things_... You know, if a bunch of white women around town were having black babies, why wouldn't you think they'd all fucked a black man?"

Crying. "Don't. Just don't. Please."

"This thing is diseased, and some man out there is carrying around whatever blood or germs or whatever the hell causes this, and you fucked him. This is not _my_ child. It can't be."

More crying.

"You did this. It's your fault, and I will not stand for it. When I'm done with you, I'll find whoever it was who helped you create this thing, and I'll give him a Christmas present. He'll surely have more use for it than me."

"What?" Alarmed. "What is that? What are you going to do?"

Screaming. "No, don't! Louis, don't!"

Stabbing sounds. A choking sputter as her throat was cut. The baby made a sound, and he stabbed it too. Then came the vicious sound of the knife being driving through her chest, into the mattress beneath.

Louis made a sound of disgust and said, "I can barely stand to touch the goddamned thing."

The echoes faded away. When they were gone, the woman and her baby had disappeared.


	39. Embracing rose petals

She was still wrapped in her trance, but recognized the bedroom as the one where she and Joseph had slept. The bed was familiar, as was all the other furniture. The floor was carpeted now, no longer hardwood covered in a bloody rug.

Joseph's postcards hung on the wall. Wherever he traveled, or wherever his friends traveled, Joseph collected postcards, and now they hung in a band at head height all the way around the room. There were more than a hundred, each framed behind glass, and the frames were made of wood or metal, plastic, woven straw, and even a few of bone or seashell. Augusta looked at them, the expression on her face vaguely sad.

New York, Seattle, Sedona, Key West, Cancun...

The room began to vibrate, and the framed postcards rattled on their hooks. Some swung gently from side to side.

Cape Hatteras, Boston, Winnipeg, Montreal...

This was Joseph's space. Not hers.

Playa del Carmen, Banff, London...

Joseph had a broken music box that he treasured. When it had worked properly, it played John Lennon's _Imagine._ After it broke, it only played part of the first verse before it turned back on itself and repeated, over and over again. _Imagine there's no Heaven... _played by plucking metal tabs as the coil unwound. It was made of glazed ceramic, and the sculpture that turned slowly atop it as it played was the word "peace" spelled out in blocky letter stacked atop each other in a column.

Juneau, Charleston...

The music box began to play. She knew where it was – sitting atop the dresser against the wall across from the foot of the bed. Lying in bed, you could see it. It sat beside the television.

_Imagine there's no Heaven... Imagine there's no Heaven... Imagine there's no Heaven..._

Silent Hill...

The room bucked; furniture jumped an inch off the floor and crashed back down. The music box continued to play as the post cards flew from the walls. Some flew out in straight lines, others in arcs to smash against walls, and the ceiling and floor. Those that flew at her seemed to hit a barrier and exploded in bursts of glass and shattered frame that rained down on the carpet. The postcards, colorful pictures on thin cardboard followed, drifting down like dying autumn leaves.

The wallpaper had a pattern of leafy curlicues in wide vertical stripes, a very pale green against a beige background. She saw something dark bleeding through, forming shapes that she recognized as letters, and then as words.

Maybe it was paint, but more likely blood.

_HERE'S A LULLABY TO CLOSE YOUR EYES..._

_IT WAS ALWAYS YOU THAT I DESPISED..._

_I DON'T FEEL ENOUGH FOR YOU TO CRY..._

_SO HERE'S A LULLABY TO CLOSE YOUR EYES..._

_GOODBYE_

Lullaby. It was a lullaby for a dead child. This was simply more twisting of the knife. He hated her, which wasn't a surprise. After all, he'd said as much.

_Imagine there's no Heaven... Imagine there's no Heaven..._

He'd loved that damn thing. He thought it was funny, how it broke in just such a way to play just that part of the song. Augusta had never liked it because it made her feel a little uneasy, how it had broken like that.

The scent of perfume was suddenly in the air. The words on the wall were beginning to run and ooze. Augusta turned to see the Blue Lady looking back at her with a slight smile on her face. She stood by the dresser, holding Joseph's music box in her hands.

"_He fills this house,"_ said the Blue Lady. _"His hatred bleeds out through the walls."_

And the music box exploded. Shards of ceramic and bits of metal fell to the floor, where they clattered against shattered glass and broken picture frame.

Before the last piece fell, the top floor of the house disintegrated. For a moment, a storm of bricks and shattered boards and broken pieces of furniture raged around her. Dust and nails, chunks of wood and masonry whirled around her as if she stood in the middle of a tornado, watching the world come apart around her. Wind tore at her and at last the seashell comb that had held her hair in place all this time let go. Her hair unrolled stiffly, then separated into ropes that lashed at her face.

When the dust cleared, Augusta blinked in sudden blinding sunlight. She looked up, as did the Blue Lady, to see the clouds high above swirling around a tight opening of blue sky. Augusta thought it looked like a hurricane spinning around its eye. Sun shone down in a single slant like a spotlight, only on the ruins of the house and on its small backyard. At the edges of the cone of sunlight, wind roared, and mist and snowflakes spun in a furious whirlwind.

Augusta realized she could hear things breaking and tearing apart. Trees splintered and roofs took flight. Windows burst and cars were thrown end over end down St. Germain Avenue. Inside the sunlight however, there was only a stiff breeze.

The Blue Lady pointed at Augusta, indicating something behind her. She turned to look and saw, with the mist tearing around it, a wall of slick, glistening mud frozen in place and towering above her, edging into sunlight.

"_Everything north of here is gone," _said the Blue Lady, and Augusta knew what this was – the wall of mud that had obliterated Silent Hill five years ago. It was all the water contained behind the City Reservoir Dam, the shattered dam, rocks, dirt, and twisted trees. That, and all the buildings between here and the edge of the national park.

A long time ago, Amethyst, the desk clerk at the Ramada Inn in Brahms, had said two large hills were swept away when the dam broke, and they were in there too. Augusta could only guess at how many millions of tons of debris and water were simply standing still, halted in their sweep toward Toluca Lake.

All it would take, the Blue Lady seemed to indicate, would be a single word, a single action, and in an instant Silent Hill would be wiped from the map again. It would leave Augusta's nightmares and rise again in someone else's. Pieces of debris, some of them very large, were hurled into the wall of mud, each hitting with a loud smack.

"_Let's go now."_ What remained of the second floor collapsed onto the first, flattening everything below. To Augusta, it felt as though an elevator had dropped a few feet, or as though she had tripped on a stair.

To her right, across the remains of the house was the backyard, bathed in sunlight and teeming with flowers of all kinds. Augusta recognized her rose arbor and azalea bushes. She saw her butterfly bushes, lilies, and gooseneck flowers. There were only two trees in the backyard, one a towering poplar, the other a myrtle tree that with all its blooms looked like a red cloud. A tall brick wall blanketed in flowering vines ringed the yard.

In the center of it all, crowded by flowers was a brick patio a little less than ten feet by ten feet, home to a small table and a few plastic chairs.

In one corner, shaded by a waving curtain of roses dangling down from the arbor, Mary-Elizabeth sat at a small table with a handful of stuffed animals in tiny chairs. There was a plastic pitcher, and plastic cups and saucers on the table, along with a small plate heaped with cookies. She was having a tea party.

"_Take the rose from your backpack, and the seal from your pocket. Now is the time to use them."_

At the library, Augusta had torn a page with the Seal of Metatron drawn upon it from a book, folded it and put it in a pocket of her jeans. Now she dug a hand in to retrieve it. Then, she swung her backpack around, unzipped it and plucked out the blue rose from inside, from the spot where it rested on boxes of bullets. She shrugged off the backpack and dropped it. Everything inside spilled out to clatter on the patio bricks. She held the seal in her left hand, and the rose in her right.

The trance still held. Augusta wanted to hurtle across the patio and scoop up her daughter. Instead, she flicked her left hand and tossed the seal down on the brick patio. The stiff breeze caught it, but it sank toward the ground and when a corner of the folded page touched down, a pattern of phosphorescent blue flame raged to life across the bricks. In their corner, the small table and its chairs were hurled skyward, drifted toward the raging wall of mist, and were snatched away.

A Seal of Metatron ten feet square burned on the patio, where, in the center, a mound was growing and pushing up bricks. One by one bricks lifted up, shot upward and were thrown away to disappear. A fountain of thrown up soil followed, and then Weeping Mary, like a movie zombie bursting out of its grave.

Mary-Elizabeth remained oblivious. She lifted a cup to a teddy bear's yarn smile.

Weeping Mary snarled her fury and looked much the worse for wear as she fell to her knees. Her parrot top had been ripped away to show that her breasts were missing. They were cleaved off and gone, and blood ran from twin raw wounds the size of saucers. One arm was broken, and the bone had burst through the skin. Half of her hair was gone. Part of her scalp was peeled down and flapped in the breeze.

Her sunglasses were gone as well, but no blood poured from her empty eye sockets. They were no longer empty, even, Augusta saw. Now they were packed with dirt.

"_You bitch," _she growled at the Blue Lady. "_You held her back, otherwise I would have had her. I was waiting for her to walk across so I could grab her. You've helped her this entire time. I thought I'd tied you tighter than that this time."_

The Blue Lady replied calmly, _"She belongs to me, and when those who belong to me and Mine stand against the likes of you, my chains are loosed."_

"_I'll just get another one. I threw everything I had at her and she STILL made it through, but I'll just take others. I always have and I always will. You haven't won. I'll get back what she took from me." _Weeping Mary jabbed a finger at Augusta. _"And you haven't won either. Don't make the mistake of thinking otherwise. I'll haunt you until the day you die. You'll see me in your dreams, woman."_

Dirt and broken bricks blasted out of the hole as she threw herself into the air, leaping up before she flung herself into the wall of mist and vanished from sight.

After a moment of quiet, another shape began to emerge from the pit Weeping Mary had dug. It was rectangular and blocky, and Augusta recognized it as Joseph's elegant coffin. It rose up, fell over, and the lid popped open to reveal Joseph whole and untouched by decay, glaring at her.

The expression on his face melted from rage to confusion, and then to fear. He was looking past Augusta, at the Blue Lady.

"_Your patron has deserted you, Mr. North, and I'm all that keeps you here now. Speak your piece and you'll be on your way."_

Hate washed over his face. His coffin lid slammed shut, and after a pause the coffin rose up on end and flew at Augusta, the lid flapping open and shut like a hungry mouth.

Augusta held out the rose. The coffin touched and exploded and Joseph flew backward in burst of wooden shrapnel and twisted gold fixtures.

He was splayed on the brick wall, hung in place by several larger chunks of wood and gold that had punched through his body and the vines, and into the wall.

"_Hate only goes so far, Mr. North. It's not enough to carry you through."_

He ignore the Blue Lady and instead screamed at Augusta, "YOU RUINED EVERYTHING! YOU'RE THE REASON I'M DEAD!"

Augusta flinched.

"You never loved me," he said, "The only reason you stayed with me was the money I made. You wanted _things_. You wanted a _house._ You never wanted _me._"

The Blue Lady said nothing. Augusta found she could speak again.

"That's a lie. I did love you. At the beginning, it was like a star flaring to life. You wanted your _money_ and you wanted your _career_. That's why it faded and died. I stayed with you, and let you carry me along because I wanted it to come back. I wanted to figure out what I'd done wrong and fix it."

She spoke calmly and quietly, as though she'd spent hours reasoning out her words.

"We've had this fight before, just before I left you, so why are we going through this again? I did love you, but you said you never loved me."

"Liar."

"It's not," she said. "I did, but you pushed me away, and kept pushing. Why? What did I ever do wrong?"

He stared at her.

"You're cold," she said, "You're cruel. If you thought I was just with you because you'd take care of me, why did you take it out on that child? That little girl didn't ask us to be her parents. She didn't ask for me or you."

"You only got pregnant so you'd have a way to keep me under your thumb. Pop out a kid and you'd have had my wallet in your pocket for the next eighteen years."

She looked at him mournfully. "It was an accident, but I never cared about the money. Yes, it was nice, and yes, I liked being taken care of, but in the end I was waiting for you to love me again. That's all. Our daughter was innocent, and you lied to me to get me to do that awful thing. You said _we _weren't ready. You said that later on _we _could have a child, after you got where you wanted to go in life. You gave me hope, and it wasn't worth the air it took to say the words."

"You took everything from me, Augusta. I couldn't rebuild my life in Hot Springs because of you. I had to go somewhere else."

"You did it to yourself when you lied to me. You set this in motion. The only thing I was ever guilty of was wanting something from you that you wouldn't give me. I don't know why and at this point I don't even care why you stopped loving me. All I want is to take my child – she's not yours – and go home. I want to leave this place and never come back. I don't want to talk to you anymore. All I want is to go home. You can go to hell or heaven or wherever else. I don't care. I'm not yours anymore. You can't hurt me anymore."

"I never hurt you."

"Yes you did. You never hit me, but you liked having someone you could control. You liked fucking with my head. That isn't why I'm here. I'm not as weak as I used to be. I'm not here so you can control me. I only came here to find my daughter. You can go to hell."

"YOU'RE WHY I'M HERE!" He screamed. "I WOULDN'T HAVE DIED IF I COULD HAVE COME BACK TO HOT SPRINGS!"

"_She is not the reason you are dead, Mr. North. The one and only reason you are dead is because you were driving drunk. Your hate bound you to this earth, because you're afraid of the hell waiting for you. Your time in this place bound you here, in a place that's neither of this earth or upon it, and so you've had a respite. You could have even repented and saved yourself. However, the truth of the matter is that she sinned and so did you, Mr. North. Your sins are greater, because you hated, and hate is the gravest sin of all. I have heard enough of this, and have had enough of you. The suffering ends now."_

The rose exploded in a burst of blue, and the petals traveled against the wind like swarming bees to alight on Joseph, who began to scream. Every place a petal touched, a bright blue flame flared to life. His clothing burned first – the white shirt, black pants, and abstract tie. His flesh burned next as he continued to scream. He was screaming still when the flames danced on nothing but bone.

Then the bones were consumed and there was nothing left on the brick wall but a patch of scorched vines.

Augusta dropped to the ground, landing hard on her knees. Her mind reeled. This was all too much. Now it was over.

Mary-Elizabeth got up from her miniature chair, skirted the pit and scattered uprooted bricks, and ran to her mother. Augusta looked up to see her, and her heart leapt into her throat. She couldn't breathe and couldn't move. Then she couldn't see, when tears bathed her face. All she could do was hold out her arms, and wait to embrace her child. She was crying too hard to do anything else.

She held her for an instant. She felt her tiny arms inside her sweatshirt. Heard her heartbeat. Then, the scent of roses warmed by the summer sun washed over her, and she was lost in a cloud of petals, a storm that boiled around her. She felt their kiss wherever they touched.

The petals were falling like snow, when the Blue Lady knelt before her and took Augusta's hands in her own.

There for a moment and gone. Where was she. Where had she gone? Petals landed on her cheeks and stuck in the tracks of her tears.

"Where is she?" she gasped. "Where did she go? She was here – what happened to her?"

The Blue Lady knelt, and took Augusta's hands in her own. _"Your daughter went back home."_

"No..."

"_She's home now. You'll see her again some day. It won't be for a long time to come, but some day."_

She screamed. "NO!"

Then, "Why! I came all this way and I fought through so much to protect her and get to her. All I wanted was to take her home with me. All I wanted to was to get out of here and go home with her!"

"_Yes. You did come all this way, and yes you did fight. You fought for people you'd never met and never knew, and for that you will be blessed. But... the child you fought for does not exist."_

"But I saw her! She was here–"

"_She never lived in your world. She can't join you there."_

Augusta yanked her hands from the Blue Lady's grasp and beat her fists on the ground, shrieking. Weeping.

The Blue Lady took hold of her wrists with a grip like iron. Augusta hung her head and sobbed.

"Why? What was the point? If I can't make it right, why can't I just die? Why did I fight? Why did I do any of it if I can't save my child?"

"_Why? Because you are a good and noble person. Your soul is clean. Go and know that. Know also that you will be blessed. It is promised to you."_

Augusta snapped to attention. She didn't care about that, but a thought had burst into being.

"Take me. Take me instead. Can she live if I give up my life? Can she live instead of me? I'll do anything. I don't deserve to live. I killed her. I let him talk me into it. Take my life and give it to her instead."

"_I can't. It can't be that way."_

"WHY NOT!"

"_Because you have a life to live, and it's time to let go of everything that kept you from living it these past five years. You are noble and good. You fought like a hero for people who had nothing to do with you. You brought goodness to a terrible place. You never gave up. Take that, if you take nothing else from your time here. Go now and live your life. Live it well, and be proud. You will be blessed."_

"No... no, my child... My daughter..."

Vertigo swept over her, and she fell on her side.

"Mary-Elizabeth... Kitty... Please no. Let me..."

The wind picked up. The sound of buildings blowing apart grew louder, into a roar that drowned out all other sound. Mist and snowflakes washed over her. Patio bricks beneath her receded beneath a layer of moss-covered mud. Saplings sprang up one after another, in between rocks and broken pieces of masonry. The world seemed to pull apart, then come together, pull apart again. Superimposed on itself, tearing apart.

The Blue Lady knelt, watching her, until dizziness overtook her and she lost consciousness.


	40. Only Sunday

The first time she awoke, she opened her eyes to see a woman, probably a hiker judging from her clothes, on her knees staring at her with concern. Another hiker, a man, stood nearby shouting into a cell phone. The woman's eyes went wide and she turned and called to her partner.

"John! John, she's awake! Come here!"

And then she lost consciousness again.

When she woke again, she was being carried up the stairs at the observation deck on a stretcher. Sparkles of sunlight on Toluca Lake lanced through the trees and she winced. Her head hurt. She barely remembered the sensation of riding in some sort of vehicle, and that made sense. It was probably a Land Rover or something similar that could take her from the location where her house had once stood all the way to here. She figured there must be a bridge across the Toluca River, and probably one across the Illiniwak as well, for just that sort of thing. What else could the National Park Service do – airlift out people who hurt themselves?

She was strapped in on the stretcher and didn't like it. She struggled weakly, then gave up. A paramedic looked down at her and said something soothing that she couldn't make out, and she caught a glimpse of her truck parked right where she left it before she went under again.

The third time, she came to in a hospital bed at St. Jerome's Hospital in Ashfield, where she spent the afternoon attended to by nurses who came and went. Across from her bed, a television was bolted to a metal frame high up in the corner and she watched a series of shows, one after another,about famous sunken ocean liners. To see elegance decayed by years on the ocean floor – or in the case of the _Empress of Ireland_, the bottom of the St. Lawrence River – reminded her of Silent Hill.

She thought back to rotting interiors. The Ridgeview Medical Clinic Building. A basement apartment, an auditorium, a library, and a department store. A high school and a hotel.

She thought of abandoned cars parked alongside empty streets.

She wondered how many people were still trapped in Silent Hill, and how long they would suffer. How many had she set free? She didn't feel like counting, because the number would be too small and it would depress her.

I did a little good at least, though, she thought, and looked out her window to see traffic flowing by on Lynch Street.

The next morning, after breakfast and an assisted trip to her hospital room's bathroom, she was lying in bed and trying but failing to find anything worth watching on the television when her admitting physician, Dr. Prahdeep Ghosh – and why did that name sound familiar? She couldn't remember – stopped by to update her on her litany of injuries. He assured her that all in all, things would feel much worse for a while than they actually were. Her concussion was minor and he advised her to avoid strenuous movement and if at all possible, sudden movements. Her bruises would fade in time, even the bite marks, some of which had broken the skin, but only barely.

"We'd like to keep you here at least one more night, however, for observation."

Augusta agreed.

"We have you on painkillers at the moment, because some of your bruising was quite deep into the flesh, but you should be able to manage with over-the-counter pain pills such as Advil or Tylenol. Whatever your personal preference may be. Just don't exceed the recommended dosage," he said with a smile. "And you'll want to get plenty of rest for the next few days. I'd also advise trying to avoid anything that might upset your stomach. What with a concussion you might be a little touch-and-go regarding that, so now's not the time to be adventurous in the kitchen."

"I think," he said, "that you're actually very lucky, although later on an officer from the Brahms Police Department and a park ranger will be in to speak with you."

"Why?" She realized as she asked that it was a stupid question.

Dr. Ghosh's gaze turned serious. "Because, Ms. Jackson, we would like to find out what happened to you, and who did it. You were severely beaten and apparently left in the national park. Do you have any memory of the incident?"

You have no idea, she thought.

He asked other questions, so many that she began to wonder if there would be anything left for the police to ask her later. She answered as truthfully as she dared.

Did she know who hurt her? Yes and no. She had known Joseph, but couldn't comprehend a being such as Weeping Mary. In the end, she said no, she didn't.

Was it a boyfriend, a significant other? No. Joseph was not significant.

"I'm a woman, and I'm battered, but I'm not that kind of battered woman," she said.

Finally, Dr. Ghosh left her, and she went back to not finding anything worth watching, and thinking of Silent Hill.

In a way, she reflected, it feels like a weight is off my chest. It's over. I went through hell and came out on the other side.

But why? I couldn't save my child.

You can't save something that never existed. But why does she not exist? Because I aborted her.

Why did I abort her? Because Joseph lied to me.

I am guilty of wanting love. A person can lead you around by the nose and talk you into doing things you'd never consider when you have that problem.

I sinned, I repented, I'm forgiven, and I don't think I'll be making a lot of the same old mistakes again. I am strong and I can fight. Hell, an angel herself said that I'm noble and good and that must count for something.

I will always miss my child. Any normal person always grieves for their dead child, but I am alive and I can do good things in the world.

I am alive. I am a good person.

This is the part, she thought, on talk shows where the person finally says 'I love me,' and everybody cries. I don't think I'm quite up for that.

She thought about Kitty again. I let him talk me into that because I was weak, and I believe I have proved to myself that is no longer the case. I have the bruises to prove it. I'll live a good life for her. I'd like to believe she'll be proud of me.

Weakness isn't the gravest sin of all. That would be hatred, the cold fire that burned in Joseph and built for him a fine tomb of black marble.

I don't think I honestly hate anyone except for him, and now he's dead, so it's a moot point. I think things are going to be okay now. I can let it go.

Later, she dozed but snapped awake when a beautiful, petite blonde woman and a mountainously huge black man knocked softly on her open door and entered. Augusta saw nurses and orderlies passing by in the corridor behind them.

The woman smiled as she approached Augusta's bed, and held out her hand. Augusta accepted and shook it gently.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Jackson. I'm Detective Bennett-Sims from the Brahms PD. You can call me Cybil though, if you'd like. This is Ranger Charles Vardry with the National Park Service. Dr. Ghosh probably told you we'd be coming. We'd like to talk to you."

Throughout the interview, Cybil and Ranger Vardry asked many of the same questions Dr. Ghosh had posed, and they referred to the answers he had collected from her. It seemed as though they hoped to get a different answer if they asked the same question more than once. Augusta understood why, though. Through gentle coaxing, you could convince a battered woman that it would be best to let the police take care of an abusive boyfriend or spouse.

She sensed they might be preparing to ask the same question again, and stopped them. "I don't have a husband or boyfriend, or even an ex to do this to me. I don't know who did it. I parked my truck and walked into–" she almost said 'town' but caught it in time, "–the park, and the next thing I know I'm lying face-down in the mud."

Cybil, sitting in a chair beside the bed, looked at her. She was recording the interview with a small tape recorder set on the bedside table, as she wrote in a notebook.

Ranger Vardry shifted from foot to foot. He was built like a wrestler and his uniform strained to cover his muscles. He and Cybil shared a look before he said, "I believe I'll excuse myself if you don't mind, ma'am. Perhaps you two could chat in private."

Cybil said, "I think that would be a good idea. Close the door behind you, if you wouldn't mind. Thanks."

When he had gone, she looked back at Augusta.

What did this mean?

"Ms. Jackson, I'm going to leave my recorder running because I can do some creative dubbing a little later, and I still need to ask you some questions that are going to be required due to the circumstances. However, it's time to tell me the truth."

"I am telling the truth."

Cybil smiled. "Actually I believe you. You probably don't know who attacked you, although I'd say it's more likely you don't know _what_ attacked you. Would that be more accurate?"

Augusta looked away.

"You didn't go to Paleville National Park, did you? You went to Silent Hill."

Augusta looked back at her, turning quickly enough to send a bolt of pain through her skull.

"I've been there too. In fact, I was there just shortly after the dam broke. The very day it happened, actually, because I got sent in to see why Brahms lost all communication with Silent Hill all of a sudden that Sunday afternoon. So, level with me and tell me what happened. At least... Tell me, if you can, how you came to be in possession of a gun registered to Lisa Groft. You've heard of her, I'm sure – she's the actress. She was reported missing in Los Angeles, Californiathree days ago by her boyfriend. You were wearing a holster when you were found, and that gun was in the holster."

Cybil leaned forward and placed a hand on Augusta's.

"Again, if you can, I'd also like to know whose blood you were covered with. Your clothes were crusted with it. We've tested it and found it to be human, and from a male, but that's all we know. The DNA doesn't hit on anything in any database." She hesitated. "And... if you don't mind me asking, and it's only if you feel like answering, can you tell me why you were found covered in white rose petals? They were all over you."

Augusta took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "I'm not a bad person. I heard that's why most people are called into Silent Hill these days. But for me, I was suffering for somebody else's sin. There was somebody who hated me, and he wanted me to suffer, so he called me to come to him in Silent Hill. He wanted to kill me but he's dead now. In fact, I think he's been dead for a few years."

Cybil only nodded. It was as if she had heard similar stories from others before.

"What's today?" Augusta asked.

"Sunday."

"Only Sunday?" It seemed as though she had been in Silent Hill for a year, or a lifetime.

Only Sunday. Cybil nodded again.

"If that's the case, then this whole mess started Friday morning, just after breakfast..."

They talked until long after the tape ran out, and Augusta told Cybil everything she could remember. Cybil responded with her own memories. Five years ago, she had helped a man look for his daughter in Silent Hill. She had seen things she didn't dare talk about with anyone but others who had survived a time there. Sometimes she dreamed about them, but mostly she did as anyone else did – she got up in the morning, ate breakfast, told her husband she loved him, and went to work. In the evening, she came home and ate dinner, watched television, made love... To relax she played video games.

"You_ are_ a good person. I know that from what you told me," she said to Augusta. "So, I suggest you follow my lead. Try not to dwell on what happened. Go home toNorth Carolinaand just live. Day in, day out. Just live and do your damnedest to enjoy it. Try to find something you really, truly enjoy – some sort of hobby – something to carry you through when you find that you just can't stop thinking about what you've been through. It will come in very handy."

Cybil wrote a phone number on a piece of paper from her notebook, tore it out and folded it, and handed it to Augusta.

"If it ever gets to be too much, call me." She smiled at her. "But I think you'll be okay. You're one tough lady. I'm living proof that a person can live and thrive even after going through an ordeal like Silent Hill, and I'd like for you to be also."

She paused. "I don't think you'll have much trouble with that, though."

Augusta lay in her bed, staring out the window at the traffic on Lynch Street for a long time after Cybil left. There was still nothing worth watching on television, but it was just as well. She wanted to think. And remember.


	41. Epilogue: Unborn

August 12, 2006

The flowers she carries she bought from a shop in the Grove Arcade Public Market, where the giant stone griffins guard the north entrance. She finds that she does quite a bit of her shopping in the Arcade these days, ever since she and her husband moved into a condo in a newly-constructed building less than a block away from it.

She met Derek Paint in June, 2004 when her bruises and bites were almost healed. He was trying to make sense of a map as he stood by the fountain in Pack Square in the heart of the city, having just moved to town. He was lost. It wasn't unusual, because Asheville's baffling street system defeats many. She offered directions. He asked her to dinner. They married in July, 2005. Derek is a full-blooded Cherokee Indian from the reservation sixty miles west of Asheville. His skin is the color of copper, and he wears his hair in a silken black braid that hangs down to his waist. He is a computer programmer for the Asheville Savings Bank, while Augusta is now the director of the Visitor's Center.

When they first began dating, people would stare, and Augusta wondered why. Later, her friend Rafaela gently pointed out that when someone as beautiful as Augusta is having dinner with someone as handsome as Derek, people are going to look. They can't help it.

"You look like a model, and he looks like some sort of movie star. People probably think someone's filming a movie here in town again."

Tonight, she will meet Derek at the Asheville Community Theater, where they will see a play. After, they plan to walk through downtown, admiring the beautiful buildings, and the statues and sculptures that seem to stand on every corner. Asheville is a romantic city. Derek is a romantic man, and without a doubt the kindest and most loving man Augusta has ever had the pleasure of knowing. They often tell one another that they are answered prayers. He prayed to find someone like her. She prayed to find someone like him.

Augusta has something she wants to tell Derek. She wears a gown of yellow silk that she made herself. It is embroidered with bluebirds and cardinals that look real enough to take flight. The silk shimmers as she walks, and the people she passes on the sidewalk think she looks like the ghost of something lovely.

She told her grandmother over lunch today, and Louisa Jackson began to cry and flutter her hands. Later they went for a walk in her garden as soon as the hottest part of the day had passed. It takes longer than Augusta had planned, and she entrusts her grandmother to call her parents in Arkansas to tell them the news, because she has to hurry home to get dressed and run her errand before she meets Derek. Later, probably tomorrow, she'll call her parents herself, and then she will call her brothers.

The Basilica of St. Lawrence stands at the intersection of Haywood and Flint streets downtown, across Flint from the Asheville Civic Center. The church was built in 1909 and was the last masterpiece of Rafael Guastavino, who is buried in a crypt inside. It is a magnificent and stunning work of art and sports a massive dome inside that makes one dizzy to look up and see it soaring overhead.

The basilica is separated from the parish house next door by a narrow brick walkway. Augusta turns to follow the walkway, descends the stairs, and walks on. A statue stands behind the church, overlooking from its high hillside the traffic passing by on Flint Street and on I-240 a block away.

Christ stands in marble, arms outstretched, silent and stoic. A plaque with a single word embossed is affixed to the statue's base, and word is this: UNBORN.

Augusta kneels and lays her flowers at the statue's feet. She looks up at His face, and sees that here in the shade of a handful of spruce trees, speckles of moss grow in the folds of Christ's robes, and in his beard and hair.

I know she's with You. Please tell her I love her.

Then she stands and smooths her dress, glancing at the buildings and trees that rise around her. Mountains green and cool with forest ring the city, and houses look down from their slopes. It seems as though when you look out at the city or its mountains, the city and its mountains look back.

The sun is shining, and a warm breeze blows. It's later than it looks, what with a sun that sets so late in the summer. Augusta walks away. She doesn't want to be late, and it will feel wonderful to step inside the cool theater. Supper afterward will be wonderful too.

Then, she will take Derek's hand and lead him to Pack Square, and there by the fountain where they met, she will tell him that he is soon to be a father.

**The End**


End file.
